The focus of my previous post was on the Black Lives Matter Movement and racism. And in Part 6 of my series, I analyzed a poster on US politics, as well as, one on global warming. Therefore, I will add to both of these to have more examples of similar topics.
Jean Quarcoopome created this poster to connect US politics and the danger they pose towards Black lives. The background colour is black to show that it is about Black people and death. In the background a transparent typography shows ‘UNITEDSTATESOFAMERICA’. Within these words some letters are emphasized in white colour, that makes one read the word unsafe. This shows that america is an unsafe place for Black people. The intention behind using the font Martin by VOCAL Type Co, was to hint towards “lettering used on placards and posters during a Memphis sanitation strike, organized by Black people protesting against unsafe working conditions in the 1960s.” (Quarcoopome, 2021)
Coco Cerrella focused on a more graphical approach to depict one big problem going on around the world, which is also strongly emphasized in the US. Namely, immigrant’s rights. The passports of different nations are cemented into a wall. They look like bricks holding society together, but walls can eventually crumble. Cerrella states that “[t]he passport that serves as the entry key for many people is at the same time a wall for migrant minorities, in a world increasingly closed.” (Cerrella, 2021) This poster is also a nod to building walls between nations, which again is a link to Trump building a wall towards Mexico, for instance.
This poster by Karen Crawford also merges topics. It combines the famous last words by George Floyd that fuelled the Black Lives Matter Movement with a face mask, marking the COVID19-pandemic. The words form a mask and are also situated exactly on mouth and nose, where the breath of the Black person shown as a silhouette should be, but is not anymore. It also shows the struggles of the pandemic that many people said they cannot breathe under their masks. But using a mask and struggling to breathe because one is being killed are two entirely different things. This shows that many struggles of mainly white people do not translate similarly to the struggles of Black people. Surely, the Black people that have died would have preffered to wear a mask instead.
To summarize, these examples combine different topics that I have already focused on in previous posts. In my next and last post I am going to show some final examples of design activist posters and then elaborate my next steps for my thesis. Thank you to everyone that has read until here.
Sources:
Cerrella, Coco: Immigrant Wall. In: Graphis Online, 2021. URL: https://graphis.com/entry/5eb64068-528e-47d5-a430-495ec7f8a52a. Accessed 2026, Jan. 26.
Crawford, Karen: I CAN’T BREATHE. In: Graphis Online, 2021. URL: https://graphis.com/entry/65a5d705-6cd2-4f26-8b42-47644cbfb1e4. Accessed 2026, Jan. 26.
Quarcoopome, Jean: UNSAFE/United States of America. In: Graphis Online, 2021. URL: https://graphis.com/entry/4438657f-06dc-44e1-a6a4-363d559384ef. Accessed 2026, Jan. 26.
