I was approached by director Candice Vernon and her production company Chromista at the time to create an illustration for a documentary poster. The project involved merging the portraits of the two victims into a single illustration.
To begin, I collected various images of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. I experimented with different compositions and angles, combining the pictures to explore potential layouts. This process helped me familiarize myself with their facial features. During this exploration, I typically discover a style that suits the project.
Here’s the final proposition I arrived at after my initial drafting sessions, and I believe it works particularly well. George and Breonna are depicted together, both gazing directly at the viewer. Their faces emerge from a pitch-black background symbolizing their deaths, as though the trials are summoning them back into the conversation as we discuss their fate.
The director envisioned a different approach for combining the two portraits: a "flip" poster that could be viewed upside down. Instead of frontal portraits, we created profile views. Each portrait features the skyline of the city where their stories unfolded—Minneapolis for George Floyd and Louisville for Breonna Taylor—set in the background.
