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 entire field below the masthead is a solid black plane. In it two elements: above, a block of David Hillard's quote set in blue type (left-aligned, ~10 lines), below, the silhouette of a panther leaping, head left, tail right, diagonal from bottom-left to top-right. The silhouette isn't a flat colour — it's filled with a photograph of a crowd (faces, raised arms) in the blue tone. The eye enters at the lightest point (the quote), falls onto the panther, then reads the faces inside it. Nothing else on the page.
3. Colour — two: black and one blue. Black is the ground, not a line; blue does both the text and the image. The photograph inside the panther is the same blue — so one plate carries both the word and the image, which is as cheap as possible yet looks like three layers.
4. Typography — masthead fixed. The quote is in a serif text cut, medium size, no headline — it reads as a statement, not a headline. Typeface name not confirmed.
5. Message — the panther is made of people: the Party IS the community. From five metres: a black page with a blue beast (a sign). From half a metre: faces within it (an argument). It passes the three-second test — the panther silhouette was the Party's most recognisable 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 fine halftone resolution because it's already masked. Douglas turned his limit (one extra 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 inside it noise; on black it's the only light thing, so the only thing you look at.

Principles: fotografija-u-crtezu ravna-boja-na-daljinu dva-rastojanja-citanja To verify against the image: whose crowd photograph this is (a Free Huey rally?) — MoMA doesn't say; whether the quote is in blue or in white (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 a political prisoner (the Chicago/New Haven trial).
2. Composition — the entire image zone is one photograph of Seale, three-quarter profile, head in the lower half on the left, hands and microphone below. The top-right quadrant is empty photographic tone (a wall) and holds the quote, right-aligned, in five stepped lines that narrow toward the face — the text „falls" onto the head like a speech bubble without a frame. The caption „Bobby Seale, Chairman…" in italics below.
3. Colour — black + brown, but the photograph is posterised: no halftone, just three values (paper, brown, black). The 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 isn't decoration but follows the gap 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: the portrait. From half a metre: the sentence. There's nothing third.
6. Why exactly this way — posterisation is the only way for a photograph to survive newspaper web printing in two colours without a halftone screen; Douglas wasn't choosing a „style", but what could actually be printed. This is Douglas when he isn't drawing: it shows that the method (posterise, one colour, text in the gap) is the same as with drawing.
7. What would kill it — a halftone (real screen) instead of posterisation: the face would go grey, the brown would look like a colour error.

Principles: jeftina-tehnika-kao-jezik jedno-pismo-siroka-skala dva-rastojanja-citanja To verify against the image: whether the brown is a second colour or whether it's yellowed paper + black with a screen (in the panel it looks like a real second colour; MoMA says two colour).

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 label, 2021: Douglas "often adapted his most successful drawings for multiple formats — leaflet, posters, even greeting cards" and cites his statement about feedback from the community as key.
2. Composition — 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 across 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 title is in the image.
5. Message — numbers. "We are many, and we have one man locked up." At five metres: a green mass and two words. At half a metre: individual faces — the reader looks for themselves in the crowd (v1 calls this "the people in the pictures were the readers"; accurate as description, unconfirmed as a quote).
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 he needs to show the enemy, and photographs when he needs to show us — that's consistent throughout the paper.
7. What would kill it — a title set in type over the photograph. The banner is already the title; a second one would double it.

Principles: ravna-boja-na-daljinu fotografija-umjesto-ilustracije To verify against the image: who the photographer is; whether the man in the beret is Seale (MoMA doesn't say).

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

Principles: neprijatelj-kao-zivotinja jeftina-tehnika-kao-jezik dizajn-za-nepismenu-publiku 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: neprijatelj-kao-zivotinja ravna-boja-na-daljinu jedna-slika-jedna-rijec 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 and simultaneously a poster. Getty copy: lithograph on paper, 57.1 × 38 cm, 1969. The newspaper version seen in the panel (PGDA, c. 1969) is two-colour, black + brown. The Getty version is blue — same drawing, different colour in a different format (confirms the MoMA label on the drawing's adaptation across multiple formats).
2. Composition — a boy frontal, in the upper two thirds, mouth open (shouting), in his right hand a raised copy of the paper (cover with the panther) upper right, in his left hand a paper reading ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE lower left. The two papers are two light rectangles framing the head; the head is the third, largest element. Triangle: paper upper right — head — paper lower left. Sleeves rolled up (Getty: work, not pose).
3. Colour — one colour for the background (brown in the newspaper, blue with gradation at Getty), black line, paper as white. Getty describes a "subtle gradation from light to dark" of the blue — so in the lithograph version there is a transition; in the newspaper version there is not (to verify).
4. Typography — ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE hand-drawn, capitals, in three lines, as the headline of the paper the boy is holding — the text is an object in the image, not a caption on the image. The paper's masthead in miniature is the actual logotype.
5. Message — Getty (Smarthistory): "It's the newspaper that is the weapon." The child sells the paper and shouts the slogan: distribution is shown as a heroic act. From five metres: the face and two white rectangles. From half a metre: the headline in his hand and the panther on the cover 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. The v1 claim that the back page of every issue was a poster "designed to be torn out" — Getty and Letterform confirm this in a general sense (a poster for distribution), not literally "every issue". Douglas builds distribution into an artefact: the paper is bought, the back page gets 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, not an illustration of a vendor.

Principles: artefakt-nosi-distribuciju dizajn-za-nepismenu-publiku ravna-boja-na-daljinu fotografija-u-crtezu (in the background of the crowd? — to verify; in the panel a wooden wall with no photograph, tag conditional) To verify against the image: newspaper version — whether there is a photographic element; the exact date of the issue; brown or yellow.

1. What it is — 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; full page.
2. Composition — child in close-up, head fills the bottom two thirds, looking straight ahead. Behind the head red rays from a single point behind the crown, across the entire upper half. The hat is drawn and filled with dense dot screen; hat band with circles; on the band a badge with a photograph of Huey. Glasses — two photographs are mounted into the lenses (children at a table, presumably the free breakfast). Bottom right, in front of the shoulder, a photograph of two small children, cut out. Title one line, top, small relative to the image. Eye path: face → glasses (photographs) → badge → children below → title last.
3. Colour — red only in the rays; everything else black and screens of black (hat, photograph skin tone). Red is background energy, not an element — as in OSPAAAL posters (Serrano 1968, which MoMA places beside this one).
4. Typography — title in capital grotesque, thin, small; class (Letterform: titles Futura/Helvetica/gothics), specific typeface not confirmed. The title is barely louder than a signature — the image speaks, the text signs it.
5. Message — the survival program (breakfast, clinics) seen through the child's eyes: literally, in the glasses. From five metres: rays and face. From half a metre: three photographs within the image — each one is proof of the program. This is Douglas 1971: from "kill the pig" (1969) toward "we feed the children" — MoMA/Culture Keepers note the same shift.
6. Why exactly this way — a photograph inside 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 a newsprint halftone would not have held 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 inside them: the sunburst works because it's one flat colour in sharp wedges; softness would turn it into a stock-catalogue background.

Principles: fotografija-u-crtezu zrakasta-pozadina-kao-energija jeftina-tehnika-kao-jezik artefakt-nosi-distribuciju To verify against the image: what exactly is in the photographs inside the glasses; whether the face is a photograph or a drawing with a screen (in the panel — a photograph, posterized).

1. What it is — poster, printed in Paris, 1970s (V&A). Technique and dimensions not given. The V&A lists it as Death to the Fascist Pigs; the image carries 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" — thus 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 content don't match — noted, not resolved.
2. Composition — a red field with white rays from a point behind the heads. Two men frontal, to the waist, filling the bottom two thirds; the first (left, with 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 to the right. No perspective; the figures are flat outlines.
3. Colour — red, black, paper. The rays are the paper (negative) — so here too red is the field, white is the light. Three values, two plates — most likely screenprint or two-colour offset.
4. Typography — semi-bold grotesque, capitals, left aligned, in a "window" above the image. Class; specific typeface not confirmed. The French setting is not Douglas's — added in Paris.
5. Message — a threat (if you condemn 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 precisely OSPAAAL logic.
6. Why exactly this way — outline + flat colour + rays = a drawing that survives any reproduction in any country, even when copied from a newspaper. Douglas designed for remix, before that word existed.
7. What would kill it — the actual title Death to the Fascist Pigs set large across the drawing: the text would kill the rays, and the rays are the composition.

Principles: zrakasta-pozadina-kao-energija ravna-boja-na-daljinu jeftina-tehnika-kao-jezik 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 carries; either this is a poster version or a later reproduction. Technique and dimensions: to verify.
2. Composition — woman frontal, to the waist, head upper left of centre, rifle diagonal (upper right → lower left) alongside a spear/rod; 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 run to 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 issue, not the subject.
4. Typography — semi-bold grotesque, capitals/lowercase, three lines; class. The title is the only typeset element and fits into the gap between the rays as in 02 (text in the image's empty space).
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, rifle diagonal. From half a metre: 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; rays give energy without a second figure; the portrait is dignified (v1: "dignity is a compositional decision: where you put the eyeline" — as description exactly right; here the gaze is straight at the viewer, 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 send it back into illustration.

Principles: zrakasta-pozadina-kao-energija jeftina-tehnika-kao-jezik artefakt-nosi-distribuciju 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.