Rise Up. Show Up. Unite!
We are a group of more than twenty American artists united to help Joe Biden and Kamala Harris defeat Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
We believe one of the most important things we can do right now to help the campaign is to get more people showing visible support for the candidates. We hope you’ll join us in spreading this message of unity and loudly proclaim your support for the Biden/Harris campaign!
TLDR: Want to join us? Scroll to the end!
UPDATE! Visit riseupshowupunite.vote for free downloads of this and other art and to see more art from the campaign. There are now more than 1600 posts on the hashtag on instagram!
The Backstory
Last week, I [Jessica Hische 👋] had a good conversation with the Biden creative team. I shared that one of my concerns for the upcoming election was the lack of visible support for the campaign. There are a lot of folx within the creative world and beyond posting on social media about voting (a wonderful and necessary message), but few of those posts mention the candidates by name. It’s somewhat implied that if you’re promoting voting or voting rights that you’re likely voting Biden and encouraging a Biden vote, but it’s not explicit. There’s a “I guess I’ll vote for him if I have to” vibe throughout leftist social media, but exasperated resignation doesn’t get people to the polls.
Prior to this conversation, I received an email from Scott Thomas (who lead the design for Obama’s original campaign in 2008), about participating in a get-out-the-vote project he’s spearheading about “unity” (which also doesn’t mention Biden/Harris by name). After our conversation, I got the phrase “Rise Up. Show Up. Unite!” in my head and just couldn’t shake it.
I decided to create a lettering piece around this phrase and reached out to my friend Adé Hogue about joining me. He immediately said yes. As we passed sketches back and forth we schemed about turning our one-off personal project into a full campaign, inviting other artists from the lettering and design community to participate.
As artists with large online followings, we feel a responsibility to use our platforms to help causes we believe in and try to bring positive change to the world when possible—even if that means losing a few followers along the way. Nearly every person we reached out to enthusiastically signed on — just over twenty artists in total.
Our goal as a group, as stated above, is to get people not only voting for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris but talking about voting for them out loud. Many of us supported different candidates in the primary but understand and strongly believe that we must unite behind the team that has a real chance of defeating Donald Trump and steering America in the right direction—a team that will only win if we fully and enthusiastically support them.
I’m beyond grateful that so many people jumped at the chance to create art in support of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. There’s a lot of criticism surrounding “design challenges” for important issues, but I really do believe that a huge show of visible support within the creative community can help change the collective energy around the election.
That’s why we call on you to join us. This isn’t a hollow call to create art for the sake of art. This is a call to flood everyone’s feed with open support for our candidates to activate and energize voters who may vote third party or may sit out the election entirely. We must proudly support Joe Biden — by doing so we give others permission and encouragement to turn their quiet support into activism.
A massive thank you to all of the wonderful artists who jumped on board to participate in the launch of this project! Here is a list of everyone who has participated (so far!) And a big thank you again to Adé for his encouragement and rallying efforts.
Scott Biersack, Allison Black, Noah Camp, Tad Carpenter, Candace Carson, Yao Cheng, Lisa Congdon, Jon Contino, Jill Dehaan, James Edmondson , Maggie Enterrios, Jessica Hische, Adé Hogue, Lauren Hom, Kyle Letendre, Meg Lewis, Erik Marinovich, MaryKate McDevitt, Joana Muñoz, Jeff Rogers, Eso Tolson, Cymone Wilder + …YOU!
Join in!
If you want to be a part of this project, you’re welcome to share the art we have created (you can find it all on instagram under the hashtag #riseupshowupunite) or better yet join us by creating your own art using the phrase “Rise up. Show up. Unite!”
You can find a template with the Biden/Harris logo to get you started here (Open the pdf in Adobe Illustrator to grab the vector logo). When you post art, tag @votejoe (an account managed by the Biden campaign) and @time2unite (Scott Thomas’s unity project) and include the hashtag #riseupshowupunite.
Thank you for RISING UP with us, SHOWING UP at the polls and through your mail in ballots, and UNITING to defeat Trump!
This is a grassroots effort and isn’t part of the official campaign, but the Biden/Harris team needs all the support they can get to win the most important election of our lifetimes.
