Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez leapt to fame this summer by winning the Democratic primary in New York’s 14th congressional district, defeating long time incumbent Joseph Crowley and clearly embracing a Democratic Socialist agenda.
Among the factors contributing to Ocasio-Cortez’s grassroots-powered win was a visual campaign by Tandem Design NYC. In crafting the campaign’s look and feel of the campaign, the Tandem team was informed by revolutionary grassroots movements of the past, and specifically by movements led by labor and civil rights activists – visuals often made by hand and conveying a sense of cultural urgency.
Opting for bold lettering and a flat design treatment, the Ocasio-Cortez identity avoids pretentious signifiers and the color scheme draws on purple, a symbolic blend of the two-party system’s red and blue, plus a complimentary yellow. Enlarged, all-caps text, set in English and Spanish, in equal weighting, and her name, with inverted exclamation marks and stars, is unapologetically multicultural; an outward display of the candidate’s roots as a working-class Bronxite with Puerto Rican heritage.
