Warren ends presidential campaign
WITH THE END OF WARREN’S 2020 BID, THE BEST CAMPAIGN COLOUR HAS BEEN RETIRED
A dying campaign, like a relationship on the brink of an overdue end, can sometimes give off an air of unlikely, almost desperate cheer — like a last giddy exhale before everyone runs out of air, or a preview of all the nostalgia that will eventually come. So it was Sunday at the Cambridge, Mass., headquarters of Elizabeth Warren, the progressive senator and Harvard professor who ended her bid for the presidency Thursday.
Two days before the Super Tuesday primaries that effectively killed Warren’s campaign, dozens of her supporters crammed into the cluttered maze of offices — next to a kung fu studio, across the road from a fencing gym — that served as her local headquarters. They were there to hear pep talks from top Warren surrogates (“It’s not over!,” they said. But of course, by that point, it already was.) Later, they took selfies with her dog.
All around the office that day there were signs of the kind of campaign Warren had run. One wall was tacked over with file folders stuffed with fat policy proposals. Dead centre in the crowd was a massive bearded man in suspenders. As the surrogates spoke, he scrolled through texts in a group chat on his phone. It was titled “#bigstructuralchat,” a shout-out to Warren’s signature, wonky and eventually doomed pledge to deliver “big, structural change” to the nation.
To an outsider the office otherwise looked like most campaigns do near an end — full of tired young staffers speeding back and forth begging volunteers to make one more call, knock on one more door. But there was one difference that was impossible to miss. All around the office, everywhere, on T-shirts, and posters, on buttons, and stickers and even icons online, was a most unlikely shade of minty green. “It’s almost like Italian gelato meets American domestic,” said Jason Logan, an ink maker in Toronto — like the colour of a 1950s refrigerator, or the coolest skirt you’ve ever seen.
Warren officially ended her campaign Thursday, two days after she suffered a slate of heavy defeats on Super Tuesday, including a thirdplace finish in her home state. Warren was the last woman in the race and, at 70, the youngest candidate left in the field. Her campaign will be remembered for pushing a host of progressive policies on banking, the environment and health care and dissected for its failure to win over voters outside Warren’s liberal, college-educated base. But among those obsessed with campaign iconography — the wonks who love to talk fonts and button design — Warren 2020 will always be remembered for its striking, unforgettable hue.
Liberty Green, the official colour of the Elizabeth Warren campaign was born in 2018. It was designed at least in part by Matt Ipcar, who previously served as the design lead for both Obama campaigns. He patterned it after the oxided copper shade of the Statue of Liberty, according to his wife, Michelle Goldberg.
Hunter Schwarz, a journalist who covers campaign design, first wrote about Liberty Green on his website last December. “It really does stand out,” he said in an interview this week. “No one else is using it in politics at the national level.”
Warren wasn’t the only candidate to branch out from the traditional hues of American politics this year. Kamala Harris used purple, red and yellow in her campaign. Kirsten Gillibrand used pink. But Warren was bidding to become the first successful presidential candidate to use green since Jimmy Carter, in 1976, Schwarz said.
“The first impression is just that it’s got this kind of nice, cool, minty colour and it seems a bit surprising,” said Logan, the founder of The Toronto Ink Company, and a graphic designer. “It’s associated with this beautiful symbol of America (the Statue of Liberty) and it takes us out of the realm of the bright, candy-colour, red, white and blue that we’re used to for political parties.”
Schwarz described Liberty Green on his website as a “soft, seafoam shade.” He called it both a throwback to the pastels of the 1950s and also something very on trend.
Online, Warren supporters adopted Liberty Green the same way Trump supporters did MAGA hats in the last campaign. They used the hex code #b7e4cf — which designers use to match colours on screens — to build custom Twitter icons and one-of-akind Warren art.
“Because it’s an uncommon colour, it makes you turn your head and notice it,” said Logan. “It’s just sort of pretty and bit unlikely.” Still, Logan questions now if it was the best choice for a political campaign. “In the world of graphic design, cool colours kind of recede,” he said. “So I just wonder, was it a hot enough colour?”
The fact that Warren did lose could mean campaigns are more reticent to experiment with colour in the future, said Schwarz. “Political designers are very driven by who wins races,” he said. Still, he doesn’t think Liberty Green is necessarily dead for good. “I think she used the colour in such a distinctive way,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if, 30 40, 50 years down the road you have a candidate who uses this colour and says, this is a tribute to one of my heroes, Elizabeth Warren. That’s something that happens sometimes in politics.”
Liberty Green was born in a political consultant’s laboratory in 2018. It died, with the Warren campaign, this week. It stood out in a world of primary colours and conservative choices for its style and its daring. It will be missed.