Strikethrough: Typographic Messages of Protest is a new exhibition beginning July 23, 2022, at the Letterform archive. Curated by Silas Munro with Stephen Coles of Letterform Archive, the exhibition will feature more than 100 objects of protest spanning the 1800s to today. The visual history of protest on display will range from nineteenth-century antislavery broadsides to the colorful affiches of the Paris 1968 uprising, from the revolutionary Black Panther newspaper to the public awareness posters of the AIDS crisis. ¶ The hardcover exhibition catalog, Strikethrough: Typographic Messages of Protest, is authored by Munro, with an introduction by Colette Gaiter. The catalog tells the story of graphic design in protest with 250 images, including high-resolution reproductions from Letterform Archive’s collection, archival imagery of the art in action, informative historical features, and a contribution on type by Coles. Designed by Munro with Brian Johnson, Michelle Lamb, and Randa Hadi of Polymode, it features custom typefaces by Tré Seals of Vocal Type, and Ben Kiel and Jesse Ragan of XYZ Type. ¶
To prepare for the launch of this fantastic competition, Rich Tu collaborated with Tré Seals of Vocal Type to design a bespoke wordmark and typeface for launch of the 2021 competition.
To ensure that the firm had an identity that was unapologetically black and powerful, Vocal created a bespoke typeface inspired by the remnants of the People’s Free Food Program. ¶ When Black Panther Party founders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the party in 1966, their goal was to end police brutality in Oakland. But a faction of the Civil Rights Movement led by SNCC member Stokeley Carmichael began calling for the uplift and self-determination of African-Americans, and soon black power was part of their platform. * ¶ With this new concept in mind, the Black Panthers started the People’s Free Food Program. This program provided free food to black and other oppressed people. The intent of the Free Food Program was to supplement the groceries of black and poor people until economic conditions allowed them to purchase good food at reasonable prices. The Free Food Program provided two basic services to the community: 1. An ongoing supply of food to meet their daily needs. 2. Periodic mass distributions of food to reach a larger segment of the community than could be serviced from the ongoing supply. The community was provided with bags of fresh food containing items such as eggs, canned fruits and vegetables, chickens, milk, potatoes, rice, bread, cereal, and so forth. A minimum of a week’s supply of food was included in each bag. * ¶
The final typeface, aptly named “Impactful,” is inspired by the grocery bags of the People’s Free Food Program. ¶ While they only needed an all caps headline typeface, I thought it would be important for the typeface to have some versatility, should they need it. Characters such as ‘C,’ ‘G,’ 'S,’ and most numerals allow the graphic designer to switch between flat and angled terminals, allowing for two different tones. ¶
