Emory Douglas Soundslide Project

The designer I chose to research for the Soundslides project was Emory Douglas. He stood out to me because his designs were used in the Black Panther Party Movement in order to fuel the fire for change. His work was shown in pamphlets and newspaper that the party produced in attempt to gain supporters, and reflected the struggles of the time period. Douglas' art often ridiculed political leaders and challenged certain aspects of society.

Douglas used colors and cartoon-like designs that often contained leading lines. I chose to incorporate these aspects into my Soundslides project. Deciding on red and black for the master page colors, I thought these would reflect the theme of my project the most. The two colors together are powerful as was the movement of the time. The background black was a piece of old notepad paper edited on Photoshop. The red lines start on different parts of the slides. I then used a white font to make the key points prominent among the slides. I found the font I used on DaFont.com, labeled "Jungle Fever" because it was similar to the font found in a lot of Douglas' work. There are slide headings on the top of all the slides as well to introduce the subject and add repetition. Each of the pictures put into my project were pieces of his artwork that were designed to illustrate the revolution.

After creating the pages for the project, I placed them into Soundslides to compile them. In regards to the song, I picked the version without words because I did not want it distracting from the slides. "Lose Yourself" by Eminem had the perfect sound because it has an intense beat to it, which reflects the movement itself. The song needed to be powerful and "Lose Yourself" picks up in the middle.

 I enjoyed learning about Emory Douglas' works of art. All of his pieces have meaning and purpose behind them. Today, he even works for great causes to keep his passion going. He is a very successful designer and his work is a key part of our history.