Creative Insights: Knowing When to Push the Envelope With Political Design

Let’s face it, a lot of political design looks the same. There’s no shortage of reds, whites, and blues in campaign logos, mailers and on digital materials. While some campaigns and candidates have broken successfully out of that design box, it’s still tough to get campaigns to take creative risks. 

In a recent conversation with C&E, Amanda Biundo, the creative director at Ascent Strategic, talked about how she approaches design with her clients and how creative pros know the time is right to push a risk-averse client a bit harder. 

“Don’t let your pride get in the way,” said Biundo. “Sometimes you’re going to have to change things to appease a client. But also, if you know it’s going to ruin the integrity and it’s not going to help then stand up for yourself.” 

One common mistake Biundo said she sees campaigns make in the digital creative space: trying to fit too much information into a small space. She encourages clients to embrace digital ads, especially those crafted for social media platforms, that are clear and concise — understand they aren’t policy briefs.   

“You’re going to be inundating people with so much information, and honestly, people don’t have the attention span for it,” she said. “Microsoft recently did a study that shows the average human’s attention span now is eight seconds, which is not as good as a goldfish anymore at nine seconds. So when you’re giving them hard to digest topics … less is more.”