Political Campaign Design and Recent Technologies: The Case of Indonesia

Abstract In 2024 there was an unprecedented number of global voters participating in national elections. In recent years, AI tools have increasingly been adopted by campaigners, the voting public, professionals, and laymen in interesting exchanges of narrative contestations. This pictorial essay reflects on the implications of recent technology on political campaign design by examining several design artifacts that emerged from the 2024 Indonesian National Election. An introduction is presented before the consideration of a selection of seven images with extended captions; finally, an ending commentary follows. Indonesian election activities began in late 2023 and culminated on the voting day on February 14, 2024. The design artifacts featured in this writing are all used in purposeful political campaigning; they include formats such as advertisements, party symbols, political portraits, and images circulated online. They may have been produced by official campaign teams with designers, amateurs, or members of the public working with fewer resources. Collectively, these design artifacts begin to point toward a backdrop of a changing image culture, where technological apparatus of the time affects changes in modes of production and propagation. At the same time, technology also becomes its own image, a persuasive symbol of progress used by political candidates to appeal to the masses.