The Center for American Politics and Design (CAPD) is a research group investigating the graphic vernacular of American politics.
The first of its kind, this collection consists of every campaign logo† from the 2018 election for United States Congress. The archive is a tool to explore trends and typologies that reveal themselves only when viewed in aggregate.
Founded in 2018, CAPD aims to increase political literacy among designers and to foster a dialogue about the role of design in the American democratic process.
Our complete dataset is available upon request; we welcome anyone to use this collection to conduct their own analyses.
This is a cool project. The topography of the political design landscape is so vitally important, and (in my opinion) has not been investigated thoroughly enough. It’s a monstrously large undertaking no doubt. It makes me uncomfortable to think about what horrors we may unearth about ourselves from this project. Personally, when I begin to think about dissecting our collective American graphical political heritage, I begin to think about Paula Scher’s Maps.
Play around with the filter function on the homepage and compare/contrast regions of the US. For example, compare Rhode Island to Texas. Now look at Nebraska. You can go even further by filtering by Office, or Incumbency.
Fascinating stuff. I’m going to love revisiting this in a few years.
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The Washington Post did an interesting story using their database: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/politics/political-logos/
Oh wow. I’m blown away by this, and ashamed I didn’t find this earlier. Thanks for sharing!