A color palette of rich, oxidized green referenced the weathering of the copper in American monuments; while red, white, and blue represented the renewed strength of the union. The Hoefler&Co typography, building off of the design of the Biden-Harris campaign brand, evenly balanced the modernity of sans serif Decimal typeface and the dignity of the serif Mercury typeface. We ensured extensibility was a key part of the logo system so the brand could work large and small, in digital and physical spaces and (as seen below) in hybrid spaces with large digital backdrops.

Inclusivity, accessibility, and performance were at the heart of the process for creating the Biden-Harris Presidential Transition website.

To achieve WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility, Wide Eye collaborated with Beyond Vision, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based website accessibility testing company employing analysts who are blind & visually impaired. Additional accessibility features include both a high-contrast “dark mode” function and a function to dramatically enlarge the website font size. For performance and security, Wide Eye collaborated with the technical team at WordPress VIP.

With immovable, high pressure deadlines as well as the sheer unpredictability of Election Night, our core team remained nimble and agile, preparing for an array of eventualities and content scenarios including disputed results. To solve for this uncertainty, we built a WordPress backend interface that allowed for almost every section of the site to be toggled either on or off, allowing the Transition team to quickly deploy almost any solution they’d need.

Following our work on the Transition, we were called upon to design the new Biden White House, a more extensive design system and one that needed to be built to last for the entirety of the administration. Our core goal was to convey The White House as The People’s House: warm, open, hard-working, honest, and inclusiveThe new White House brand needed to reflect a grounded modesty; a house made of wood, not a gilded palace. The color palette of the brand features warm tones, including wood tones that are a direct reference to the oak timbers of the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.

In consultation with typographer  Jonathan Hoefler and Biden campaign Creative Director Robyn Kanner, we formally inverted the campaign’s original hierarchy of Decimal and Mercury typefaces to give serif Mercury a starring role. Additionally, blueprint-like illustrations evoked the architectural space of The White House, serving as a reminder that America  is always a work in progress. 

The final logo system, designed in partnership with Texas-based illustrator John Mata, is versatile and adaptable.

The new WhiteHouse.gov was the result of an intensive, weeks-long sprint with an immovable deadline of 12:01pm Eastern Time on Inauguration Day. Despite the compressed timeline, we sought to create an online home reflective of “the People’s House,” one grounded in  inclusivity, accessibility, performance, and security. We prioritized WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility and other a11y standards, as well as toggle functions for dark mode and enlarging text. We partnered with analysts who are blind and visually impaired, technical specialists, and with translators who ensured every piece of content was thoughtfully translated into Spanish.

The White House letterhead, Zoom backgrounds, and report cover pages, all designed in Figma as a leave-behind of assets to jumpstart the design team even before Day One.

Beyond the primary task of creating a beautiful and accessible new White House brand and website, deploying the brand so that every department would have visual alignment and access to all new collateral on January 20 was essential.

The use of Figma allowed for a brand system that could instantly be shared across remote teams and cross-departmentally.