Style combination · Contrasts
ACT UP × Black Lives Matter Street Murals
Both turn a movement's short slogan into public type, but Gran Fury printed posters, stickers and billboards in condensed sans over photographs, while these murals are painted once, on the street, by many hands and without photographs.
Mix them and make something ACT UP Black Lives Matter Street Murals
01
What each style brings
Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.
ACT UP & Gran Fury AIDS Activist Graphics Black Lives Matter Street Murals
- Type from Black Lives Matter Street Murals
- Colour from Black Lives Matter Street Murals
- Form from ACT UP
- Composition from ACT UP
- Surface from ACT UP
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Black Lives Matter Street Murals
Now!
Bungee, standing in for Outline capitals drafted in white by a sign painter for other artists to fill, each in their own style (Japhy Witte's layout for the Capitol Hill mural in Seattle, 2020, whose letter dimensions were taken from Charlotte's mural)
Text · ACT UP
The graphics of New York's AIDS activist movement: the SILENCE=DEATH poster of 1987, a pink triangle above white capitals on black, and the posters, stickers, T-shirts, billboards and bus ads of Gran Fury (1988–1995), ACT UP's 'unofficial propaganda ministry'. Professional offset print and the language of Madison Avenue (staged photographs, one-line slogans, facts in small print) were placed where advertising goes, to accuse government, church, press and drug companies of letting people with AIDS die.
Fira Sans; ACT UP used Gill Sans Bold Extra Condensed in white capitals reversed out of black for SILENCE=DEATH (1987), settled on after months in which the collective 'argued about issues, images and fonts' and Futura Extra Bold, Extra Bold Oblique and Extra Bold Condensed in black or white
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Black Lives Matter Street Murals, with a counter-accent from ACT UP. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
ACT UP & Gran Fury AIDS Activist Graphics Black Lives Matter Street Murals
-
#141414ground · 36% -
#f2efe8ink · 14% -
#f6c400accent · 18% -
#c8102eaccent · 14% -
#f06ea9accent · 10% -
#1e7b3caccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #141414;
--ink: #f2efe8;
--accent-1: #f6c400;
--accent-2: #c8102e;
--accent-3: #f06ea9;
--accent-4: #1e7b3c;
--font-display: "Bungee", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Fira Sans", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
ACT UP & Gran Fury AIDS Activist Graphics: These are the graphics of a movement of gay men, lesbians and people with AIDS who were burying their friends, and many of their makers and subjects are living or died of AIDS (Mark Simpson, who appears in Kissing Doesn't Kill, died in 1996; Oliver Johnston in 1990); HIV remains a global health issue and ACT UP is still active. The pink triangle recalls the homosexual prisoners of the Nazi camps and was turned to point up as 'a disavowal of victimhood' (in Finkelstein's account; the Henry Ford's history says the inversion began as a mistake that the collective kept): do not use it, the SILENCE=DEATH equation or the kissing couples as decoration, Pride merchandise or brand campaigns, since the style was made to turn advertising against corporate greed, and do not picture people with HIV as victims or as a threat. SILENCE=DEATH is © 1987 The Silence = Death Project, which lent it to ACT UP (the poster reads 'Used by permission by ACT-UP'); Gran Fury's website declares its own artwork public domain, but the photographed people and quoted brands are not: write your own slogan and stage your own photograph, and never present a generated image as a period work.
Black Lives Matter Street Murals: These murals answer police killings of real people, among them George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, are kept up by Black artists' collectives and community groups, and remain contested: Black Lives Matter DC called the D.C. mural a 'performative distraction from real policy changes', others were defaced with tyre marks, a swastika or 'All Lives Matter', and the D.C. original was dug up in 2025 under congressional pressure. Do not borrow the slogan, the road-yellow capitals or the letter-per-artist layout as decoration for a brand or a campaign that is not the movement's own; commission and pay Black artists and credit the painter of each letter (Seattle's transport department paid the collective about $3,000 per artist to repaint in 2020); and know that painting a road without a permit can break local law: in Florissant, Missouri, the city painted over activists' mural outside the police department again and again and police arrested two of them under an ordinance against street painting. Paintings made without the city are still part of the movement's own history, from Seattle's first mural, painted during the Capitol Hill occupation, to the Defund the Police slogans in Washington and Toronto.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With ACT UP
- Extinction Rebellion Graphics Pairs well · A later movement that again reduces its cause to one emblem and a fixed set of slogans in heavy capitals; pair XR's flat colour grounds with ACT UP's facts in small print when a protest poster must both rally and inform.
- Atelier Populaire (May '68 Screenprint Poster) Contrasts · Both answered a crisis with overnight slogans on the street, but the May '68 posters were brushed by hand and pulled in one ink, while most ACT UP and Gran Fury posters were professionally printed in offset and modelled on advertising; choose rough urgency or seductive polish before mixing them.
- Punk & DIY Zine Contrasts · Gran Fury photocopied some posters and handbills like a punk zine, but kept the layout clean and legible: one image, one slogan and plain sans type in place of ransom-note collage, even when the photograph broke into coarse xerox dots (Read My Lips); add punk's torn xerox only when the message should look home-made rather than official.
- Pop Art Graphics Pairs well · RIOT (1988), a painting later issued as a sticker, reworks Robert Indiana's LOVE letters and Kissing Doesn't Kill copies a Benetton campaign: borrow Pop's habit of lifting mass-media images and lettering, but replace Pop's ironic detachment with a named target and a demand.
- Corporate Identity Modernism Contrasts · Stands here for the logo logic of SILENCE=DEATH, one emblem and clean sans capitals repeated like a corporate mark; the advertising Gran Fury and ACT UP otherwise copied was 1980s brand campaigns and mastheads (Benetton, Nike, Coca-Cola, The New York Times) rather than mid-century corporate identity. Set an AIDS-era slogan in a corporate format when the point is to turn a brand's own voice against it.
- Latin American Feminist Protest Graphics (Ni Una Menos and the Green Wave) Contrasts · Two movements signed with a triangle, ACT UP's pink one on black and the green kerchief, but Gran Fury bought ad space and printed offset photographs and Futura, while the green wave wears its sign and letters its placards by hand; polish against handmade multitude.
- Instagram Slideshow Activism (Social-Justice Infographics) Contrasts · Its confrontational opposite: black grounds, hot pink and one blunt slogan, where the typical slideshow shuns 'blood red or black messaging' (Ría Thompson-Washington) and softens the message to stay comfortable.
- Plain Tobacco Packaging Pairs well · Gran Fury's white capitals on black are the activist cousin of the mandated warning statement; borrow their wit when a health message must persuade without leaning on clinical shock photographs.
With Black Lives Matter Street Murals
- Graffiti & Hip-Hop Graphics Contrasts · Graffiti writers paint their own names on walls and trains, uninvited and in letters few outsiders can read; these murals lay one shared, legible slogan on the road, usually with the city's permission. Let a writer fill one letter, as Sam Sneke did in Seattle, without turning the slogan into a piece.
- Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering Contrasts · Both are brush-painted public lettering, and a sign artist laid out Seattle's letters, but sign-writing serves a shop at eye level with shaded, mixed alphabets, while these murals lie flat on the road as one unshaded slogan read from above. Borrow the layout skill, not the shading.
- Egyptian Revolutionary Street Art (Mohamed Mahmoud Murals) Contrasts · Cairo's murals were painted against the state and erased by it; most Black Lives Matter street murals were painted with city permission, and many are maintained by cities or community groups, though the D.C. original was removed by its own city in 2025. Ask whose voice the paint speaks in before borrowing either.
- AfriCOBRA Pairs well · AfriCOBRA's letter-built portraits and Kool-Aid colours are a ready model for filling each giant capital with Black portraiture and pattern; credit the artists and commission Black painters for the letters.