Zohran Mamdani’s bold, city-rooted campaign captured the essence of New York and played a key role in his historic win as mayor. The Drum spoke with two design legends about the work and why it was so impactful.
Much like New York itself, Zohran Mamdani’s winning mayoral campaign was a melting pot of clear messaging, sharp design, and a keen understanding of social media. It was an approach that felt both familiar and refreshingly distinct from his rivals.
Created by Philadelphia-based designer Aneesh Bhoopathy of Forge Design, the visuals featured a bold blue backdrop and striking orange lettering that was impossible to miss. Rather than relying on generic fonts and colorways, the campaign drew inspiration from the city and the diverse people who live and work there every day.
The design felt familiar because it drew on the visuals of everyday New York, including bodega signs, yellow cabs, hot dog stalls, MetroCards, and local shops, layered with hints of vintage Bollywood posters that reflected Mamdani’s Indian roots.
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More than just visual references, the campaign captured the New York state of mind and the individuality of each borough. The ‘Zohran for Queens’ design mirrored the Silvercup Studios sign, the ‘Zohran for Brooklyn’ reflected the Brooklyn Dodgers font, and the ‘Zohran for Manhattan’ took inspiration from the Flatiron Building, all unified by bold, vibrant colors.
“This was the rarest thing in politics: a campaign that actually looks like where it was from,” Brian Collins told The Drum. Collins is a celebrated American designer and brand strategist, known for his groundbreaking work in branding and visual identity for global brands such as Spotify and Coca-Cola.
“It evoked the working-class fabric of New York, the bodegas, hot dog carts, fruit stands and falafel trucks that not only sustain New York, but also embody our cultural richness. The design of the campaign was much less, say… ‘the city’ and much more ‘my block.’”
In comparison to Mamdani’s competitors, the colors refused to blindly adhere to the typical zero red-white-blue. “It all feels sincere,” continued Collins. “Even the typography was not squeezed from yet another brand book with a font family that already had a cousin running for Congress in New Jersey. It was drawn imperfectly with the earnest bravado of the city’s old grocery store sign painting. You can almost hear someone shouting, ‘special today on mangoes!’ behind it.”
Collins added that it was a mix of “affection and chaos” which felt “familiar, handmade, but suddenly dignified,” giving it real power. “You recognize it before you realize you are looking at politics,” he said. “Like all great design, you understand it before it communicates.”
The esteemed designer believes that Bhoopathy and his crew did a brilliant job, even going so far as to call it “genius” in its bid to feel both local and aspirational, citing how “rare” that truly is.
Pentagram’s Marina Willer echoed this sentiment, saying she had been so “excited” to see the Mamdani campaign lead to victory. Willer is a Brazilian‑born British graphic designer and filmmaker, and partner at Pentagram’s London office. During her long career, she has led the design of major brand identity schemes for Rolls-Royce and Amnesty International.
“His campaign is genuine, it’s authentic and real,” Willer explained. “It’s not about fake news, it’s not corrupt and artificially created. It is a celebration of the real world, inserted in the context of NYC and celebrating a place that was built by immigrants.”
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Beyond the visuals of the campaign, Willer said that Mamdani’s speeches were also “smart, real and honest” and a “breath of fresh air” in a world consumed by “fake, manufactured content.” The campaign, she said, brought “hope” to the world.
That message of hope was something Collins shared as well. “It carried with it faint nostalgia, a visual memory of happier days, if such a thing ever existed.”
In a sea of lifeless, sanitized political messaging, this campaign stood out because it meant something. Something inspiring to 1,036,051 people who voted.
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“But don’t mistake this design for frosting; it was conviction,” Collins added. “Design is the cake itself. Mamdani had a visual brand so unique, so different, so coherent that people actually wanted to share it, to wear it, to be seen with.
“Might this moment have landed without this design? Would this candidate feel this legitimate without it? I do not know. But I do know this: This campaign made people look. And in a time when attention is the last scarce resource, that was the real victory.”