We Work For You

In May 2025 — a year out from a general election — I was recruited onto the campaign team of the Free National Movement, the official opposition of The Bahamas. For the next twelve months I designed inside the party's communications operation, part of a team of designers turning the comms director's briefs and the strategist's lines into finished work — everything from highway billboards to Instagram stories.

The scope was national. The FNM contested all 41 seats in the House of Assembly, ratifying its full slate by February 2026, and the work had to reach voters everywhere they looked: billboards, yard signs, event flyers, rally signage, LED screens and video, newspaper layouts, t-shirts and caps, and the informational graphics that backed the leader's addresses in the capital.

I wasn't hired to rebuild the party's identity — the torch and the red are symbols Bahamians have known for generations. But working piece-by-piece at campaign speed, consistency doesn't happen on its own. So I documented and tightened the system for myself: bright red and blue anchored by their darker counterparts, one confident sans, and clear rules for how the torch sits on every format. Whatever the brief, everything I shipped came out of the same visual voice.

The pace was politics. Requests landed without warning and turned around the same day — often within hours — because the news cycle doesn't wait for design reviews. A graphic supporting the leader's budget response had to be accurate, on-brand, and on screens by the time he stood up to speak.

The campaign's affirmative message — We Work For You — carried the party's platform: VAT off everyday essentials, thousands of new homes, transparency laws, investment in Bahamian businesses — distilled into plain-language graphics anyone could read in three seconds.

When the election was called for May 12, the final five weeks became a sprint — and a second track joined the first: Vote Them Out, accountability messaging that turned the government's own record into the argument. Golden Yolk — the government's $40 million egg-production program — still had The Bahamas importing eggs, and the strategist's copy said exactly that. My job was to make it impossible to drive past.

At the FNM's campaign launch, the work met the crowd: a sea of supporters in red, candidate banners overhead, and “We Work For You” across every back — the campaign's promise turned into something people wore.