Pick Posters
For Black History Month 2023, I joined a number of black designers and illustrators in participation of the Pick Posters series, a follow up to the Pick Progress project by Chandler Johnson, multidisciplinary artist and Director of Programming for AIGA Kansas City.
Each participant was assigned a phrase and color to be incorporated into the design; mine was: “Freedom is never given. The phrase was inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter From A Birmingham Jail.
initial Sketch
Radiant Love & Brotherhood
In Dr. King's writing, he makes plain the resolve of he and his comrades in organizing and carrying through direct action to disrupt an unjustly lawful status quo in America. He addresses his critics passionately, ending his letter with a hope that "the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation..." I wanted to capture that hope in this poster and balance it against the hard truth of my assigned phrase. It's a reminder that better days are born in our laboring, in tension, in struggle. We bring about progress when we are willing to face down the obstacles before us, together.
View the entire series at: pickprogressproject.com/posters