Stylogenyin the style of Black Panther Party Graphics

Counterculture · 1967–1980 · North America

Black Panther Party Graphics

Also known as The revolutionary art of Emory Douglas, Black Panther newspaper art, Black Power poster

The visual language of the Black Panther Party, created largely by its Minister of Culture, Emory Douglas, for the weekly newspaper The Black Panther. Thick black outlines, coarse halftone and press-on tints, black plus one spot colour, press-type slogans and collaged photographs show dignified, often armed, everyday Black people against police and profiteers drawn as pigs, in a direct, legible style designed for readers of any age.

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A sample layout drawn from the style’s design choices. Stylogeny doesn’t generate images of this style, out of respect for the people it belongs to.

Use it with care

Douglas's images remain his copyrighted work and are still exhibited and licensed, and the panther emblem, the raised fist and images of armed Black self-defence belong to a movement whose members were imprisoned and killed. Credit and contextualise them rather than stripping them into retro 'revolutionary' styling.

01

How it works

  • Print black plus one spot colour on newsprint, and choose outlines and tints that survive a fast web press.
  • Enclose flat colour and coarse halftone in thick, even black outlines.
  • Collage and re-collage drawings, high-contrast photographs and press-on textures into one page.
  • Draw the people as monumental, dignified and often armed, and the enemy as caricatured pigs and rats.
  • Shout one slogan in press-type or hand-drawn capitals, such as All Power to the People.
  • Design back covers as posters to be pulled out and pasted up.

Oakland and San Francisco, California: the Black Panther Party's Ministry of Culture and its weekly newspaper, The Black Panther

02

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition
Space & hierarchy
Typography
Colour
Form & shape
Surface & texture
Ornament
Imagery
Medium & production
Tone & intent
Avoids
Abundant decoration, Floral & vegetal, Luxurious & glamorous, Calm & contemplative, Gradients, Gloss & highlights, Non-representational, Generous white space

Palette

  • #121212
  • #ece5d3
  • #d62828
  • #f08a24
  • #f2c12e
  • #2a5ca8

Typefaces

  • Press-type display capitals

    Letraset, Formatt

  • Hand-lettered block capitals

  • Bold newspaper headline grotesques

Known for

  • Emory Douglas, Minister of Culture of the Black Panther Party from 1967, design and illustration of The Black Panther

  • The Black Panther, issue 30 back cover, We Shall Survive Without a Doubt

  • The Black Panther, 3 January 1970, the police pig dressed in the American flag

  • OSPAAAL, Solidarity with the African American People (1968), designed by Lázaro Abreu Padrón from Douglas's artwork

  • Sam Durant (ed.), Black Panther

    The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas (Rizzoli)

  • MOCA Los Angeles retrospective

    2007–08

03

Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

This styleBlack Panther Party Graphics1967–1980 · North America

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

No later style in the atlas grew out of it yet.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

04

Real works

Artefacts in museums, libraries and archives that show the style, linked at their source.

05

Sources

  1. Sam Durant (ed.), Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas (Rizzoli)
  2. Wikipedia: Emory Douglas
  3. Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, OSPAAAL, Solidarity with the African American People, August 18, 1968 (qbcentre.org.uk)

How Stylogeny researches and checks a style: where the facts come from.