Committee campaigns for politics

The second stage of a wide- ranging redesign of the Labour Party’s election marketing material by Committee gets underway this week, following the launch of the first tranche of new-look work for a London by-election.

The group will refresh the party’s entire election material output. The work for tomorrow’s Brent East by-election vote will be followed by detailed design work for local, European and mayoral elections next year.

According to Committee director Ian Bayliss, the graphic design work will ultimately feed into the General Election. ‘Rather than doing everything at the last minute, we are starting work early,’ he says. The second stage of the work will involve ‘honing ideas’.

The first-stage by-election work uses a palette of colours, predominantly white and red, and ‘a fresh, clean and very British’ visual style. ‘We needed a consistent translation across the broad range of materials,’ says Committee senior project co-ordinator Hugh Price.

Committee won the work on the strength of an existing relationship Bayliss had with the Labour Party, he says. He started working freelance for the party in 1998, and continued throughout the last General Election.

The run up to General Elections is traditionally a fruitful time for consultancies, as political parties streamline their branding. The next General Election is likely to take place in 2005 or 2006.