I was very proud to have the opportunity to help Kim George launch her first campaign for Congress. This project was a chance to craft a full brand identity for her campaign that reflects Kim’s personal warmth and professional strength.
I began with a traditional patriotic color scheme - red, white, and blue. I darkened the red and the blue a little to soften them and brought in a sandy tan to add some warmth to the palate. From there, I chose a bold, clean typeface that would match Kim’s straightforward approach.
I like to design and build sites with flexibility and long term growth in mind and Kim’s website was no exception. We had a very tight window to get her site up and running and a lot of the things we hoped to include, such as a series of videos with Kim talking about her platform, were simply not going to be possible before the planned launch date. Instead, I designed a phased website rollout that would give Kim the most critical tools right away and leave room for the site to grow as the campaign got off the ground.
If you visit her site today, you’ll see a lot of those planned features were added over time but you might notice that the planned video series was scrapped. Instead, we designed a text-based Issues page that highlights Kim’s national security expertise. Being able to adapt the design and existing behind-the-scenes infrastructure was critical for this campaign, just like any other.
Unfortunately, Kim’s bid for Congress ended with the primary election but working with her was a wonderful experience.
Back the Blue had a logo already designed and a promotional video when I was brought on to the project. Having that logo as a starting point made it very easy to create some additional assets for the campaign that could be used for all sorts of things from the website to yard signs.
The proposition itself was fairly straightforward but the campaign was aimed at creating a movement that would inspire a wave of grassroots activism in favor of first responders. With that in mind, I wanted to keep the website simple and focused.
The majority of the site is set against a crisp white background with clean black text. To draw the eye around the site, I added some bright reds and blues as accents. I'm especially fond of the blue and red call to action buttons throughout the page, which are reminiscent of the emergency lights on a police vehicle.
Getting the chance to edit Kari Lake’s first campaign announcement was a true honor - one that still feels a little surreal to think about.
Like a lot of projects I have worked on, this was one where I was brought in midway through and was asked to turn a few pieces into a finished product. Believe it or not, those are some of my favorite projects. It’s like a puzzle and it’s fun to see how far I can stretch the potential of each piece until the final picture reveals itself.
In this case, they already had a few scripts that they’d shot but weren’t sure what to do with the footage. I started by cutting together a few pieces from each until I had a reworked script that encompassed all the most important elements of the different messages.
Next, I found some stock music pieces that would help evoke the right emotions as Kari spoke. This took some tweaking - adjusting the pace and layering some things over one another - but in the end, the music itself tells a story.
Finally, I added some stock footage and b-roll to illustrate some of the points Kari makes as she speaks. The footage I was given was shot on a stationary camera so it was important to break it up a bit to keep the visuals engaging. It also helped to cover for the fact that she was wearing two different outfits in the clips I cut together in the first step.
I cut two versions of Kari’s announcement videos and I was thrilled that the campaign chose to use both at different times.
The goal for the Children Are Not For Sale website was to tell a grim story about the horror of child sex trafficking but to provide hope that things can change and to instill a powerful protective instinct in site visitors in order to inspire them to take action.
The campaign already had the photo of the little girl and her teddy bear in mind when I began this project. I couldn’t agree more with them on that choice. I de-saturated the image to bring it more in line with the feeling we were trying to covey.
For the rest of the project, I decided on a jarringly stark black and white color scheme, with bits of red to highlight the most important action buttons and messages. I also wanted to make generous use of empty space to emphasize the bleak nature of the issue. I paired all this with a distressed typeface and some matching rough edges when the background color changes.
One quirk of this website that you wouldn’t be able to see from its current status is that it was designed to be shared across multiple campaigns in different states. The entire thing is built on a content management system that would allow all of the details to be customized instantly for individual states using nothing more than a simple spreadsheet. For now, this ballot measure is running only in Arizona but if it is ever revived in other states, the website can be deployed for those campaigns in a matter of minutes.
I’m a born and raised Arizonan who drinks too much coffee and will always stop to pet a dog.
I’m addicted to learning and I’ve never been good at being idle - if I don’t have a project to work on, I will create one. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned so far, it’s that opportunity comes in unexpected places.
I’ve spent seven years working for small teams as the go-to person for all things digital. There’s always a new challenge and I love getting the chance to tackle them.
Whatever opportunities or challenges you are facing, I want to partner with you to find creative solutions.
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Send me an email at contact@jlkdigital.com or fill out the form below to get in touch!