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Michelle Wu for Mayor of Boston

Evolving the campaign trail to City Hall

Michelle Wu continues to break down walls as Boston's first woman and person of color elected mayor. As the city's progressive pick, she has plans for a Green New Deal, free transit, and closing the racial gap in the city. We've been proud to join Michelle along her journey, from a community-driven campaign design to evolving her brand as mayor-elect. All along, we've strived to capture the energy, urgency, and celebration of the moment in our work.

What We Did

  • Branding
  • Strategy
  • Design System
Michelle Wu speaks into a microphone at an outdoor event in front of a crowd, some of whom hold blue "Wu!" signs. The event is set in a street in Boston with tall buildings in the background.
The image shows a repeating pattern of the letters "WU!" written in a bold, brushstroke style. Each "WU!" is in alternating colors of purple, orange, and light blue. There are three rows of this pattern, and each row contains five "WU!" designs.

The hand-painted elements were inspired by protest signage. Imagine someone scrawling on a sign for the first time: it’s imperfect, yet energetic. We augmented the hand-painted “Wu!” mark with supporting imagery taken from historic activism and marches in the city.

Four campaign buttons with different designs.

We showcased the real people that will carry her into the mayor’s office, no stock photography allowed. So in the height of the pandemic, we organized our first-ever socially distanced photoshoot of real Bostonians. Her supporters are the movement.

A collage of diverse individuals enjoying outdoor park settings in Boston.
A billboard displays three sections promoting Michelle WU for Mayor. The first section has text in Haitian Creole on a green background. The middle section says "Join Michelle and believe in a better Boston" on a blue background. The third section shows Michelle's photo and "Michelle for Mayor" on a purple background.
A grid of eight circular icons, each with the letters "WU!" in stylized font. The icons have varying background colors.
Collage of campaign posters for Michelle Wu's mayoral campaign, featuring the phrases "for Mayor" and "I'm voting for Michelle because" in multiple languages including English, Chinese, and Spanish.
Two tablet screens displaying brand guidelines for Michelle Wu. The left screen shows a color palette with various shades. The right screen displays a design tool titled "Create Your Own Designs to Share" with options to customize text, images, and shapes.

The old-school way of thinking about brand is policing and protecting what you’ve built. We made an open-source identity, with most of the design elements available in the brand toolkit we created for her supporters to use and remix. And remix they did! We didn’t see the potatoes coming though.

Collage of a pair of white socks with the WU logo worn with black shoes on grass, a crusty bread with the WU logo, the WU Twitter profile shown on a phone, a handmade pottery cup with the WU logo painted, and a car with the WU bumper sticker.

Homepage image courtesy of the Wu campaign, and supporter images courtesy of Ogusky Ceramics and Twitter.