Stop Killing Black People
Minneapolis experienced another devastating hit during the middle of the national trial of Derek Chauvin. While our community still grieves the injustice against George Floyd, on April 11th police officer Amy Potter shot and killed Daunte Wright. To inspire healing and unity amongst organizers and protestors, I decided to create typography inspired by the movement, and create messages to unify what we are fighting for. My work is living and breathing on tee shirts, hoodies, posters, and pins that I organized to be distributed for free within my community. Since the murder of Daunte Wright, we continue to see the death of Black people by the hands of police. It is for this reason that every week we (volunteers and I) travel around the metroplex to various protests and rallies to distribute this free artwork. It initially started with hoodies as a way to keep Brooklyn Center protesters warm and shielded from snow and rain, but since expanded into what our community was requesting. There are numerous examples of how design work is important to the Black movement. It unifies our message and unifies us as a people with uniformity. I raised close to $30,000 to print these items and distribute them for free. This work was featured on numerous news outlets.
“Artists have a very bad habit of being resilient, and it is that resilience that deceives us into believing that the best of it sort of gets done anyhow...” –Toni Morrison
The TDC Communication Design and the Young Ones TDC Competitions selected my work to receive the “Certificate of Typographic Excellence”. It is included in the Annual of the Type Directors Club, The World’s Best Typography®, and was also be shown at the 68th Awards Exhibition (TDC68) in New York City.
This year 253 winners were selected from over 2000 entries from 62 countries. Besides being exhibited in New York City, the winners will also be included in eight (8) identical exhibitions that will tour dozens of cities in the United States, Canada, England, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, South Korea, Spain and Taiwan.
More visuals of usage of this work in protests located in the Community-Engaged Scholarship & Outreach section.
