Brand Strategy Under Pressure: Uniting Three Organizations Into One National Brand
About the work
Senior Visual Designer For Three-Org Merger Launch
Forward Party formed from the merger of three politically-aligned organizations — Serve America Movement, Renew America Movement, and Rank the Vote — into one national brand, on a public launch timeline of months. I worked directly with the CMO to turn merger strategy into brand decisions that could hold up under real political scrutiny.
Brand Strategy & Symbolism
Researched the history of American political branding to make and defend specific creative calls, including ruling out purple (to avoid a "centrist" read) and eagle imagery (contested across the three merging bases).
Stakeholder Alignment
Worked directly with shareholders from each of the three orgs to ensure their individual distinctions were respected inside one unified system.
Launch & Activation
Built a full brand and marketing launch the led post-launch recruitment campaign design and national launch event collateral, coordinating with operations and vendors.
Problems & How I solved them
Three organizations, three histories, three shareholder groups — one brand, months to launch. We needed to ground every visual decision in political-symbolism. This meant researching and defending it directly to leadership, rather than defaulting to safe, generic choices.
About the process
political nuance, visually translated
The question of symbols
Researched the history of American political branding to make and defend specific creative calls, including ruling out purple (to avoid a "centrist" read) and eagle imagery (contested across the three merging bases).
"Big tent" not Centrist
Worked directly with shareholders from each of the three orgs to ensure their individual distinctions were respected inside one unified system.
Fifty vs One
Built a full brand and marketing launch the led post-launch recruitment campaign design and national launch event collateral, coordinating with operations and vendors.
Successful public launch of a three-organization merger, contributing to a 145% increase in traffic and sign-ups within 48 hours. Delivered alongside a full brand build, drip campaign, landing page, secondary recruitment brand, event collateral, and fundraising merchandise.
