There isn’t a single element that carried Zohran Mamdani’s campaign—except, well, for Mamdani himself. However, there was one campaign artifact that became ubiquitous on New York City streets in the months ahead of the mayoral primary: his campaign poster. Taped up on storefronts, in apartment windows, and around light posts, it was impossible to miss. The mix of colors (Metrocard yellow, Mets blue, and fire-engine red); Mamdani’s affable portrait; and a hand-drawn wordmark with an exaggerated drop shadow that alighted his head like a crown stood out in the cacophonous cityscape (and bland arena of the competition’s branding). Could a single-term assemblyperson ascend to the highest political office in the United States’ most-populous city? The poster sure made it easy to envision. 

Mamdani’s aesthetics, from his fashion to his video filters, are a master class in the communication required for a 21st-century campaign to be successful. His branding, by the Philadelphia-based design cooperative Forge, was nimbly applied to social media, mailers, and merch and brought cohesion to the multi-platform campaign without veering into corporate territory. And for all the new media associated with Mamdani, his poster, one of the oldest tools in a candidate’s kit, encapsulated the innovative messaging at the heart of his campaign: It was fresh, welcoming, and specific—and set a new gold standard for progressive, political design.

The poster was designed by Tyler Evans, a designer based outside of Washington, D.C., who was Bernie Sanders’s design director and, as of three months ago, became Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s creative director, and was the first widely circulated printed matter rooted in the visual identity that Forge created for the campaign. We spoke to Evans and Aneesh Bhoopathy, a creative at Forge, about what makes Mamdani’s poster design so compelling.

The poster is based on the design system Bhoopathy and the team at Forge........

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