PERSONAL PROJECT
My Roles: Creative Director, Photographer, and Graphic Designer
Duration: Approximately 2 weeks
Overview: "Wanted" is a piece in my series called "The Black Experience Told through Black Horror" in which I created 7 self-portraits using the mediums of photography, graphic design, and illustration.
Tools: Canon t6 Camera and Adobe Photoshop
Inspired by racial profiling that runs rampant in America, I wanted to create a multimedia piece that addressed the ways in which Black individuals are determined to be guilty solely on the basis of their appearance. I was deeply affected by both personal experiences with racism at my primarily white high school institution and events like Trayvon Martin being fatally shot by a white community watch member for looking suspicious after buying snacks from the store.
This project was completed 2 months prior to the unjust murder of George Floyd in 2020, another instance where a Black man was guilty for "fitting the description" of a criminal.
MOODBOARD
My original idea for this project was to parody Wild West Wanted posters with their large, thick typography, exaggerated sums of money, and monochromatic images of the criminals. As someone who values texture even in my digital works, i wanted to focus on emulating the crumpled paper texture, the color of the paper, and the distressed lettering that would come from letterpress printing in the early 1900's.
IMAGES AND EDITING
For the images of the criminals, I took upwards of 22 photos of my face from different angles in front of a white backdrop.
From there, I imported the photos into Photoshop and distorted my face. For some facial features, I overlayed references of other famous Black faces and tried to match my face as closely as possible to theirs. For other facial features, I freestyled the distortion. The goal was to create uncanny versions of myself - someone who could be mistaken for me but only having a few of my key features.
TEXTURE Processing
To process the photos, I duplicated the images and used the Threshold feature at varying levels to create an all-black and all-gray image of my face. This process was done for each image.
Throughout the process, I played around with different paper textures and colors, settling on a quad-folded paper that looks coffee stained. I chose fonts that evoked an old-Western style and had texture already built into them. Finally, I overlayed the entire piece with a layer of grunge and dirt which lifted the black tones in the images and text, adding to the aged feel of the paper.
Summary
What Did I Learn from This Project?
In completing this piece, I was able to accurately illustrate, reproduce, and define my graphic design style. I had already completed other multimedia works in which I used my own photographic images in my design, creating texture digitally with Photoshop tools like Threshold, focused heavily on typography and font choices, and wrote extensive copy for deeper context to my pieces but "Wanted" was an expansion on and solidification of all of those skills and concepts. I was able to complete this project efficiently because I had found my stride, became comfortable in my skill set, and had tools that I mastered in both photography and Photoshop.
If I was to go back and make changes, I would use a textured brush and mask to get more texture on the "Fits the Description" text and other places in the copy. I would also make the margins slightly larger. I made the margins that small to emulate the original Wanted poster style that felt cramped and tight on space but the text could definitely use less than an inch of additional margin space on the top and bottom.
Ultimately, I'm really happy with how this project came out. I was frustrated at the time of creating it and I think it shows with not only the subject matter but the creative choices and copy as well.
Unfortunately, it was very timely with the events that followed in that same month.
Rest in Power George Floyd.
