In his“Rainbow Coalition” speech at the 1984 Democratic National Convention, Jesse Jackson said, “Our flag is red, white, and blue, but our nation is a rainbow — red, yellow, brown, black, and white — and we’re all precious in God’s sight.”
Jackson’s presence on that stage as a Black American, like Shirley Chisholm before him and Barack Obama after him, directly challenged what it meant to “look presidential” — a phrase historically reserved for White men who used traditional, patriotic color schemes. But, patriotism doesn’t only come in the red, WHITE, and blue variety.
"I believe we're finally beginning to enter an era where candidates aren't feeling as compelled to amplify their sense of credibility and suitability for such a high office by matching their look to their understanding of the office's historical look," said Ashleigh Axios, former Obama White House Creative Director in an April 2019 interview. "Instead, they're making space in their visual identities for themselves, owning and signifying that the White House is only as good as the people who occupy it."
The explosion of color for 2020’s candidates comes after a period of 3 election years (2008, 2012, 2016) where less than 20% of candidates stepped outside the RWB color palette — cycles where America’s first Black and first female major party nominees might have felt pressure to keep more traditional palettes. After all, only one candidate (Jimmy Carter, Democratic, 1976) has won the presidency since 1968 using a non-RWB color scheme.
Susan Merriam, co-founder of The Center for American Politics and Design, said that Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s identities were strategically built to have “broad, universal appeal and fit into a long history of presidential design.”
Candidates of color and female candidates often have to make a difficult decision when it comes to color: use non-RWB colors to signify a break with the status quo OR stick with a traditional palette to signal that they are just as qualified as the White male candidates who have typically won the presidency.
Historically, minority candidates have drifted toward the former.
40% of all minority candidates used non-RWB colors compared to only 21% of White male candidates.
Although red and blue didn’t get cemented as the defacto colors for the Republican and Democratic parties until the 1990s, most major party candidates do employ some variation of a RWB color scheme.
Scott Starrett, whose firm Tandem designed Democratic House candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' 2018 purple and gold posters said: “There's a lot of tradition and a pretty well-established codification in politics. When you start to talk about outsiders or insurgency candidates ... you start looking at how do we communicate that this person is not your run-of-the-mill career politician.”