Pick Posters is a sequel project to Pick Progress, created in partnership with AIGA Kansas City and Babes Helping Babes. For this project, I was one of over 30 Black creatives worldwide invited to design a poster featuring a phrase that embodies Black empowerment from the original Pick Progress series. Pick Posters serves as both a space for representation and a statement to the design world that people of color are making their mark. My contribution to Pick Posters 2023 was the phrase "the revolution will not be televised," and I was also asked to incorporate colors from the Pick Progress ethos.
When people hear the quote "the revolution will not be televised," they often think of television. However, after diving deeper into the description and listening to Gil Scott-Heron's poem, I realized that the concept isn’t about TV at all. It’s about how media and television can pacify the masses, making them feel as though there’s no need for revolution, even when one is desperately needed. This idea reminded me of The Matrix (I’m a movie enthusiast), where people are kept docile by life’s distractions and material things.
For my poster, I combined the binary code aesthetic from The Matrix with a stylized 70s-inspired black-and-white photo of my husband. The phrase "the revolution will not be televised" is contoured and mapped across his face. While we know the revolution won’t be televised, it resides within all of us. Though red was my assigned color, I felt it perfectly captured the passion and intensity of the piece.
Below are some of the images before I made my final selections and edited them into the poster.
