US midterm elections logos compiled into searchable database
This archive organises campaign logos of every candidate on the ballot in America's congressional elections today, revealing design trends across the competing parties.
Just in time for the midterms, 6 November 2018, a team of designers has set up The Center For American Politics And Design to bring together all the graphics used to promote those seeking election to the House and the Senate – the two chambers that make up Congress.
The tool enables users to quickly draw insights and comparisons between more than 1,000 candidates competing in the elections.
"The first of its kind, this collection consists of every campaign logo from the 2018 election for United States Congress," said the team in a statement. "The archive is a tool to explore trends and typologies that reveal themselves only when viewed in aggregate."
Users can toggle between three image sizes on the page, and select from a series of filters to narrow their search.
These include design features like colour, iconography and handwriting, or political parameters including party, house or senate, district lean, and incumbency.
Once the results are in, these will form the final set of data, so users can make correlations between the logos of the winners and the losers.
The Center For American Politics And Design was created by Lukas Bentel, Seth Kranzler, Will Denton, Kevin Weisner and Susan Merriam, who are based in New York.
"We are a team of designers who set out to show the visual landscape of American politics, and investigate the intersection of design and political power," said the group.
They have already been able to draw several conclusions from the archive. Unsurprisingly, Democrats use more blue and Republicans use more red to match the colours associated with their parties.
Almost all of the purple logos are used by women, while serif typefaces are not favoured by a particular party.
The data also shows that a few have based their designs on the recognisable branding of companies like Heineken and Advil, and that just candidate used the typeface Comic Sans, which is notoriously unpopular with designers.
"The logo archive demonstrates the scale of the US election in a way we rarely see, akin to a single field of grass with a country's worth of lawn signs," said the team, who are actively encouraging others to assess the available data.
"Our complete dataset is available upon request; we welcome anyone to use this collection to conduct their own analyses."
These midterm elections across the United States are seen as particularly important by many, as the results will have an impact on president Donald Trump's next two years in office, and voter turnout is expected to be higher than average.
Democrats need to gain at least 23 seats from the Republicans to take control of the House, and at least two to seize the Senate. If they succeed, it will be much more difficult for Trump to push through policies the opposition disagree with.