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Art of the Moment: Building Artists for Harris in 100 Days

A grassroots creative operation built in (very little) real time for the 2024 Harris/Walz Presidential Campaign.

The Text That Started Everything

I was in my backyard in Northern California when my phone buzzed. It was Don Button, an old friend and mentor, with a simple question: Artists for Obama worked in 2008. Could Artists for Kamala work now?

It was the summer of 2024. Joe Biden had just stepped aside. Kamala Harris had taken up the reins with roughly 100 days until Election Day. The window was narrow, the energy was electric, and the question felt urgent enough to act on immediately.

I opened GoDaddy and started buying domains. artistsforkamala.com, artistsforharris.com, artforkamala24.com, .coms and .orgs across the board. It felt like an instinctive move. It turned out to be the right one, because what to actually call this project would take weeks to settle.

The Name Question

That deliberation taught me something I hadn’t anticipated. There is a quietly misogynistic convention in how we refer to public figures: men of note get called by their last names, women tend to get called by their first. “Kamala” had more brand warmth and immediate recognition. But “Harris” was the correct choice for a historic presidential run. It demanded the same weight and gravity we extend to any serious candidate.

Artists for Harris it was.

Building the Machine

With the name settled, I connected with the Pennsylvania arm of the campaign to help give the project traction in a critical swing state. ArtistsForHarris.com became the hub — a platform for recruiting volunteer artists, driving merch sales with proceeds going directly to the campaign, and building a creative community around the effort.

I also decided to use this project as a testing ground for Procreate Dreams, a new iPad illustration and animation tool I’d been watching closely. The campaign’s pace would demand fast, expressive motion graphics created on the fly. Dreams was perfect for exactly that.

"I could watch history unfold or I could put my skills into it. I chose the latter."

The DNC: Real-Time Creative at Full Speed

My first real test came in August when the Democratic National Convention kicked off. The first pieces I made were tributes to Joe Biden, thanking him for his lifetime of service. Two approaches to the same sentiment: an animated motion graphic that led with warmth and movement, and a quieter typographic social graphic that let the words carry the weight on their own. A sentiment that would echo across the convention floor in the days that followed. It felt right to lead with gratitude.

The first pieces I made were tributes to Joe Biden, thanking him for his service. Two approaches to the same sentiment: an animated motion graphic that led with warmth and movement, and a quieter typographic social graphic that let the words carry the weight on their own. A sentiment that would echo across the convention floor in the days that followed. It felt right to lead with gratitude.

From there the work moved at the speed of the news cycle. Notable quotes. Memorable moments. Social graphics to drive volunteer sign-ups. Each piece had to be conceived, illustrated, animated, and posted before the moment passed.

That pace was the point. The campaign didn’t need polished agency work. It needed creative that felt alive.

Rapid Response: Designing at the Speed of the Room

The convention also demanded something I hadn’t done at quite this scale before: true rapid response design. When a speaker delivered a line that felt like it had social legs, the window to capitalize on it was measured in minutes, not hours.

For Oprah Winfrey’s speech, I captured her call to “choose common sense over nonsense” and had a polished, on-brand motion graphic ready to post before the applause finished. For Colorado Governor Jared Polis, who riffed on Taylor Swift’s Never Ever Getting Back Together, I built a cascading typographic treatment that echoed the song’s repetition visually, then added “(D / Swiftie)” to his attribution line. That parenthetical alone made it fly.

This is a different discipline than campaign design. It requires a live creative brain, a fast hand, and the judgment to know which moments are worth capturing and which ones will look opportunistic by morning. Different pieces. Different tones. All deployed the same night. In real time (give or take a few seconds).

As these two rapid response pieces were built to cut through the background noise of users’ social feeds, they each feature audio, so you’ll want to turn sound on for these…

Merch That Moved

A grassroots operation lives and dies by its ability to turn enthusiasm into action. For Artists for Harris, merch was both a fundraising tool and a content engine.

The apparel line led with two hero pieces. The “Madame President” tee used the Barbie logo’s unmistakable style and color language to make a statement that was equal parts fashion and declaration. The “Tim Walzo” shirt cast the VP candidate as Ted Lasso, leaning into the “America’s Coach” energy the campaign had already embraced. Both shirts shipped with all proceeds going directly to the campaign.

The “Make America Kind Again” ball cap was a different kind of piece. Counter-messaging doesn’t always have to be confrontational. Sometimes it just has to be true. I wore this one out in the world and the compliments it drew were their own kind of campaign data.

Then we went further. The Artists for Harris Pet of the Week series put campaign-branded neckerchiefs on dogs and cats. Every purchase funded the campaign. Every photo a supporter posted of their pet in Artists for Harris gear was free organic reach we didn’t have to pay for. It was absurd. It was effective. It was exactly the kind of creative thinking a grassroots operation needs to punch above its weight.

Note: these videos contain audio so again you’ll want to turn Sound On.

The Characters

Between convention dispatches and Election Day, I developed a series of illustrated motion pieces that leaned into pop culture as a visual language.

Kama Yeah!

“Kama Yeah!” was a phrase coined by Don Button himself. It became an animated piece casting Kamala Harris as Wonder Woman, a full-tilt superhero moment for a candidate who needed no introduction but deserved the iconography.

America’s Coach

Tim Walz got the “America’s Coach” treatment, a loving riff on Ted Lasso that captured exactly the warmth and midwestern decency he brought to the ticket.

The Jackie Brown Homage

For something more cinematic, I illustrated and animated Kamala in an homage to the opening of Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown. A piece that felt like a tribute to the cultural weight of the moment. Plus there was just something so endlessly cool about Pam Grier in that role that spoke to me a kinship with Kamala’s moment.

Broz for Walz

One of the more unexpected and genuinely fun parts of the project was serving as host for a series of Pennsylvania Dems streaming fundraising events called Broz for Walz (why yes, I did in fact come up with that awesome name, thankyouverymuch), events specifically designed to reach out to and mobilize male voters. Also, just to make men voting for a woman-led presidential ticket to feel some solidairty with other like-minded gents.

The visual language leaned hard into 80s machismo: clips from classic action movies, the swagger of WWF legends like Rowdy Roddy Piper, countdown graphics that felt like pay-per-view promos. It was absurd in the best possible way, and it worked. Men showed up, donations came in, and the energy was real.

Note: these videos once again contain audio so again you’ll want to turn Sound On.

Counting Down

As Election Day approached I produced a series of social countdown graphics featuring Beyonce’s anthemic track “Freedom”, each one ticking down the days with the same urgency the whole project had carried since that backyard text in July.

The Outcome

We didn’t win. That’s a fact worth sitting with and I’m not going to dress it up.

What I’ll say instead is this: when Don Button sent that text, I had a choice. I could watch history unfold or I could put my skills into it. I chose the latter. Over roughly 100 days, Artists for Harris became a real creative operation: original illustration, motion design, live event production, merch, and a platform that connected artists to a cause worth fighting for.

The work was real. The effort was real. And given the same choice again, I’d buy those domains in a heartbeat.