Emory Douglas

1. What it is — front page of the January 1970 issue ("Selected works of the Black Panther Party" is the issue's theme). Two-colour offset, black + light blue, newsprint, 44.8 × 29.2 cm. Publisher BPP.
2. Composition — the whole field below the masthead is a solid black plane. In it two figures: above, a block of David Hillard's quote in blue type (left-aligned, ~10 lines), below, the silhouette of a panther in mid-leap, head left, tail right, diagonal from bottom left to top right. The silhouette is not flat colour — it is filled with a photograph of a crowd (faces, raised hands) in the blue tone. The eye enters at the lightest spot (the quote), falls to the panther, then reads the faces within it. Nothing else on the page.
3. Colour — two: black and one blue. Black is the ground, not a line; blue carries both text and image. The photograph inside the panther is the same blue — one plate carries both the word and the image, the cheapest possible solution that reads as three layers.
4. Typography — the masthead is fixed. The quote is in a serif text cut, medium size, without a headline — it reads as a statement, not as a headline. Typeface name not confirmed.
5. Message — the panther is made of people: the Party is a community. From five metres: a black page with a blue beast (the sign). From half a metre: faces within the beast (the argument). The three-second test passes — the panther silhouette was the Party's most recognised sign.
6. Why exactly this way — two colours and poor paper: the black plane hides registration and stains, the photograph inside the silhouette doesn't need halftone at fine resolution because it's already inside a mask. Douglas turned his limit (one additional colour) into an idea (one colour = one people).
7. What would kill it — a white background. On white the blue panther would be a logo, and the photograph within it noise; on black it's the only light, so the only thing you look at.

Principles: Photograph inside the drawing Flat colour reads at distance Two reading distances To verify against the image: whose photograph of the crowd (Free Huey rally?) is not confirmed. Whether the quote is in blue or in white is not verified against the image (in the panel it looks blue).

1. What it is — front page, 1970. Two-colour offset, black + brown (sepia), 44.8 × 29.2 cm. Theme: Seale as political prisoner (trial in Chicago/New Haven).
2. Composition — the entire image zone is a single photograph of Seale, profile-three-quarter, head in the lower left half, hands and microphone below. The upper right quadrant is an empty tone of the photograph (wall) and there stands the quote, right-aligned, in five stepped lines narrowing towards the face — the text falls onto the head like a speech bubble without a frame. The signature "Bobby Seale, Chairman…" stands in italics below.
3. Colour — black + brown, and the photograph is posterised: no halftone, only three values (paper, brown, black). Sepia makes it look like an old, documentary image, not reportage.
4. Typography — serif cut, capitals and lowercase, with quotation marks; the stepped right alignment is not decoration but follows the empty space in the photograph. Typeface name not confirmed.
5. Message — "To be a revolutionary is to be an enemy of the state…": the face and the sentence carry equal weight. From five metres you read the portrait. From half a metre you read the sentence. There is no third thing.
6. Why exactly this way — posterisation is the only way for a photograph to survive newsprint rotation in two colours without a screen; Douglas does not choose a "style", he chooses what will actually print. This is Douglas when he isn't drawing: the method (posterise, one colour, text into the empty space) is the same as in the drawings.
7. What would kill it — halftone (a real screen) instead of posterisation: the face would turn grey, the brown would look like a colour error.

Principles: Cheap technique as language One typeface, wide scale Two reading distances To verify against the image: whether the brown is a second colour or whether it is yellowed paper with black screened printing. Not verified against the image.

1. What it is — front page, 4.5.1969 (first issue in the MoMA series). Two-colour offset, black + green, 44.8 × 29.2 cm. MoMA's 2021 label states that Douglas often adapted his most successful drawings into multiple formats — newspaper, posters, even greeting cards — and quotes his statement about community feedback as the key.
2. Composition — a photograph of a rally: the crowd as a textured field across the whole area, one man in a beret stands upper left, above the crowd, in a dark jacket — the only large dark shape. Upper right a banner with hand-lettered FREE HUEY and a drawn panther. Two points (the man, the banner) hold the upper third; the lower two-thirds are a mass of faces.
3. Colour — green over the whole photograph (duotone effect: black plate + green plate), paper visible in the highlights. Green isn't "meaning", it's the colour of the issue — the next issue is brown, then orange. Colour by issue is edition coding, like Armin Hofmann by season.
4. Typography — FREE HUEY isn't typeset but lettering on the banner, within the photograph; the masthead is fixed. There's no other text in the image — the headline is inside the image.
5. Message — numbers. "We are many, and we have one locked up." From five metres: a green mass and two words. From half a metre: individual faces — the reader looks for themselves in the crowd. As a description this holds exactly; as a quote it is not confirmed.
6. Why exactly this way — photograph as witness (like Josef Müller-Brockmann Auto-Club and Lester Beall REA II): a drawing would be an opinion, this is proof that the rally happened. Douglas draws when the enemy needs to be shown, and photographs when we need to be shown — that's consistent throughout the whole paper.
7. What would kill it — a headline set in type over the photograph. The banner is already the headline; a second one would duplicate it.

Principles: Flat colour reads at distance Photograph instead of illustration To verify against the image: who the photographer is; whether the man in the beret is Seale is not confirmed.

1. What it is — front page, August 1969 ("Kill black panther, kill black people"). Two-colour offset, black + orange, 44.8 × 29.2 cm.
2. Composition — an orange field carries two pigs in clothes. On the left: a small one, in a "U.S." uniform, falling backward with raised arms, with a speech bubble "I just want to be… boss like…". On the right: a large one, in a suit, with a pocket full of money and flies around its head, speech bubble upper right. Both are in profile, drawn like a comic strip; their legs hang over the bottom edge. Behind them, across the whole field, small grey text in columns works as background noise. It reads left to right: small pig → big pig.
3. Colour — orange is the field, not an accent; black is the line. The grey tones come from transfer film — a dot screen on the suit and coat; Letterform Archive counts up to ten different patterns in a single illustration from July 1970. There is no third colour; all the "colours" are screens of one black.
4. Typography — the speech bubbles are hand-lettered, in capitals, deliberately clumsy, like a comic, not like typesetting. The background text is small-set type — specific typeface not confirmed — which works as texture, not as reading.
5. Message — the policeman is a pig, the employer or politician a bigger pig; the small one is afraid of the big one. From five metres you see orange and two thick outlines, from half a metre the speech bubbles and background words. The pig as a sign for police: according to Culture Keepers, the original drawing was clip art brought in by Newton — a single source, not confirmed.
6. Why exactly this way — the thick line, flat field, and film screen are what survives bad press registration (Letterform: "thick marker lines… masked imperfect newspaper press registration"). Caricature — an animal in a suit — is a language that doesn't require reading: even a child recognises a pig in uniform.
7. What would kill it — a realistic policeman. As soon as the figure is a human, the image becomes an opinion about a man; as a pig, it's a claim about a role. A thin line would disappear in plate misregistration.

Principles: Enemy as animal Cheap technique as language Design for an illiterate audience To verify against the image: exact text of the speech bubble; whether the background text is an actual article or a repeated slogan.

1. What it is — cover, September 1969 ("Panther's wanted dead for conspiracy of exposing America"). Two-colour offset, black + red, 44.8 × 29.2 cm.
2. Composition — the whole area is an American flag: red stripes across the full width, upper right field with black stars (not white — black on paper). Over the flag, two rats in profile, one behind the other, facing right; on their bodies the names NIXON and MITCHELL written by hand, like a tattoo. The first holds a paper (wanted poster). Bottom right, a tiny figure with a pig's head in a suit, scale 1:8 relative to the rats. The flag gives horizontal stripes, the rats a diagonal — two systems of lines, one over the other.
3. Colour — red only in the stripes (flat areas), black for all lines, stars and rats; grey screen tint on the bodies. The flag is "drawn" with one colour that belongs to it — red is at once a patriotic code and a warning colour.
4. Typography — names as lettering on the body; the wanted poster small, in the hand. No headline set in type.
5. Message — the government (president + attorney general) are vermin living on the flag. From five metres: flag + two silhouettes. From half a metre: names and paper. Here you see Douglas's system of signs: police = pig, politician = rat (or bigger pig), community = photograph or dignified drawing. The sign carries rank.
6. Why exactly this way — the flag as background is a ready-made, universally recognised pattern (stripes) that gives structure without a grid; the rat is clip-art logic — the animal is recognised from its silhouette. All of it survives bad printing.
7. What would kill it — white stars on a blue field (the real flag): a third colour that doesn't exist here, and realism that pulls the symbol back into the "real" flag. Black stars are a decision, not an error.

Principles: Enemy as animal Flat colour reads at distance One image, one word To verify against the image: whether the red is exactly in the stripes or also in some detail of the rats; the text on the wanted poster.

1. What it is — the back page of the paper, which is at the same time a poster. The Getty copy: lithograph on paper, 57.1 × 38 cm, 1969. The newspaper version (PGDA, c. 1969) is two-colour, black + brown. The Getty version is blue — the same drawing, a different colour in a different format, which confirms the MoMA label about adapting drawings into multiple formats.
2. Composition — a boy facing front, in the upper two-thirds, mouth open, shouting. In his right hand he holds up a copy of the paper (front page with the panther) upper right, in his left hand a paper with the inscription ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE lower left. The two papers are two light rectangles framing the head; the head is the third, largest element. A triangle: paper upper right — head — paper lower left. The sleeves are rolled up — Getty reads this as a sign of labour, not a pose.
3. Colour — one colour for the background (brown in the newspaper, blue with gradation at Getty), black line, paper as white. Getty describes "subtle gradation from light to dark" of the blue, so in the lithographic version there is a tonal transition. It has not been verified whether the same transition exists in the newspaper version.
4. Typography — ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE hand-drawn, in capitals, in three lines, as the headline of the newspaper the boy is holding — the text is an object within the image, not a caption on the image. The paper's masthead, shown small, is the actual logotype.
5. Message — Getty (Smarthistory): "It's the newspaper that is the weapon." The child sells the paper and shouts a slogan: distribution is shown as a heroic act. From five metres you see the face and two white rectangles. From half a metre you see the headline in his hand and the panther on the front page in his hand — the image contains itself, a paper within the paper.
6. Why exactly this way — the back page is a poster by design: Getty says it was made for a wall, a lecture, a street corner. Getty and Letterform confirm that the back page was made as a poster for distribution, but they do not claim this held for every issue of the paper. Douglas builds distribution into an artefact: the paper is bought, the back page is pasted up, the wall advertises the paper.
7. What would kill it — the boy in profile or with his mouth closed. Frontality and the open mouth are the only things that make him a voice, rather than an illustration of a vendor.

Principles: The artefact carries distribution Design for an illiterate audience Flat colour reads at distance Photograph inside the drawing — it is not confirmed whether there is a photographic element in the background of the crowd; the copy seen has a wooden fence with no photograph, so the tag is conditional. To verify against the image: whether the newspaper version has a photographic element; the exact date of the issue; whether the background is brown or yellow.

1. What it is — the back page of the issue from 21.8.1971 (PGDA; by then already Intercommunal News Service). Two-colour offset, black + red, photomontage + transfer screen. Dimensions not given; a page of the paper.
2. Composition — a child in close-up, the head filling the lower two-thirds, looking straight ahead. Behind the head, red rays from a single point behind the crown, across the whole upper half. The hat is drawn and filled with a dense dot screen; the hatband has circles; on the band a badge with a photograph of Huey. Mounted into the lenses of the glasses are two photographs (children at a table, presumably the free breakfast). Lower right, in front of the shoulder, a photograph of two small children, cropped. The headline is one line, at the top, small relative to the image. The eye moves: face → glasses (photographs) → badge → children below → headline last.
3. Colour — red appears only in the rays; everything else is black and screens of black (the hat, the skin tone of the photograph). Red is the energy of the background, not an element — as in OSPAAAL posters (Serrano 1968, which MoMA places next to it).
4. Typography — the headline is in capital grotesque, thin, small; a class (Letterform: headlines Futura/Helvetica/gothics), specific typeface not confirmed. The headline is barely louder than a signature — the image speaks, the text signs.
5. Message — the survival programme (breakfast, clinics) seen through a child's eyes: literally, in the glasses. From five metres the rays and the face read. From half a metre you see three photographs within the image — each is proof of the programme. This is Douglas 1971: from "kill the pig" (1969) toward "we feed the children" — MoMA/Culture Keepers record the same shift.
6. Why exactly this way — the photograph in the glasses is the cheapest "window" into another scene: no perspective, no second frame, no third colour. The screen on the hat gives tone without halftone, because the newsprint halftone wouldn't hold up (Letterform: transfer film as a substitute for multiple colours).
7. What would kill it — rays in a colour other than red, or a gradient within them: the sunburst works because it's one flat colour in sharp wedges; softness would turn it into a background from a catalogue.

Principles: Photograph inside the drawing Radiating background as energy Cheap technique as language The artefact carries distribution To verify against the image: what exactly is in the photographs within the glasses; whether the face is a photograph or a drawing with a screen — in the panel a photograph is visible, posterized.

1. What it is — poster, printed in Paris, 1970s (V&A). Technique and dimensions are not given. The V&A lists it as Death to the Fascist Pigs; the image contains French text: „S'ils condamnent Bobby Seale, nous retiendrons la nuit et l'Amérique ne connaîtra d'autres lumières que les flammes du brasier révolutionnaire" — so a solidarity poster for the Seale trial (1969–70), most likely a French reprint of Douglas's drawing with new text. The V&A title and the image content don't match; this remains unresolved.
2. Composition — red field with white rays from a point behind the heads. Two men frontal, to the waist, fill the lower two-thirds; the first (left, wearing a cap) holds a rifle diagonally across his chest, the second (right) behind him, same height. Text at top in a white field, four lines, with a small black panther on the right. No perspective; the figures are flat outlines.
3. Colour — red, black, paper. The rays are paper (negative) — so here too red is the field, white is light. Three values, two plates — most likely screenprint or two-colour offset.
4. Typography — semi-bold grotesque (sans serif), capitals, left-aligned, in a "window" above the image. The class is clear, the specific typeface is not confirmed. The French typesetting is not Douglas's — added in Paris.
5. Message — a threat (if you convict Seale, America burns). From five metres: red, rays, rifle. From half a metre: the sentence. The image is Douglas's, the sentence is the French committee's — the same drawing carries a different message in a different country, which is exactly OSPAAAL logic.
6. Why exactly this way — outline + flat colour + rays = a drawing that survives any reproduction in any country, even when copied from newspapers. Douglas designed for remix, before the word existed.
7. What would kill it — the actual title Death to the Fascist Pigs set large over the drawing: the text would kill the rays, and the rays are the composition.

Principles: Radiating background as energy Flat colour reads at distance Cheap technique as language To verify against the image: the original from the paper (which issue, which year); print technique; who the Paris publisher was.

1. What it is — back page of the paper, 1969 (PGDA). The reproduction (NYT) shows four colours: pink, purple, yellow, black — more than the paper usually has; either this is a poster version or a later reproduction. Technique and dimensions are not confirmed.
2. Composition — woman frontal, to the waist, head upper left of centre, rifle diagonal (upper right → lower left) alongside a spear/pole; pink rays from a point behind the head. Title upper right, three lines, right-aligned, in the empty wedge between the rays. The figure is large — shoulders reach the edges.
3. Colour — purple skin, pink rays, yellow headscarf, black line as thick as a woodcut. The skin colour is not realistic — it's a colour plate, not a description. Same procedure as the green rally (03): colour belongs to the number, not the object.
4. Typography — semi-bold grotesque, capitals/lowercase, three lines; a class. The title is the only setting and fits into the gap between the rays as in 02 (text into the gap of the image).
5. Message — a woman with a weapon as subject, not as decoration: PGDA cites Douglas — women were "reflection of the party", ran chapters, went to prison. From five metres: rays, afro, the diagonal of the rifle. From half a metre: a title about solidarity with the world — the message is international, the image is local.
6. Why exactly this way — a thick black line keeps the colours in register; the rays give energy without a second figure; the portrait is dignified — dignity is a compositional decision, a matter of eye-line height: here the gaze is straight at the viewer, the head slightly above centre.
7. What would kill it — realistic skin colour. Purple makes it read as a sign (woman-as-symbol), not as a portrait of one woman; realism would pull it back into illustration.

Principles: Radiating background as energy Cheap technique as language The artefact carries distribution To verify against the image: the actual number of colours in the original; issue number and date; whether the same drawing was used as a poster.