Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica

Polymode
2025

As we open the rich pallet we developed begins to emerge with the exhibition’s title in bold, oversized type. The accompanying photo by…sets the tone, celebrating the vibrancy and depth of Black and African culture and history.
The table of contents features our full-color system, presenting a unique interpretation of the Pan-African red, green, and black. The text is bold and deliberately disrupts traditional typographic hierarchy.
An example of an essay opener spread in bright fluorescent green with title and body text positioned towards the bottom half of the page creating tension and
Here is an example of the POV essays within the same section. The body copy rests at the top of the page and is punctuated by a bold pull quote in a similar fluorescent green.
Design of the essays have a reflective symmetry out of the gutter referencing the global mapping of PanAfrican movements. Images are held between the text columns, but also displace them in dynamic relationships that evoke diasporic migration.

Polymode designed Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica, an expansive look at more than a century of Pan-Africanist art and the ways it embodies the movement’s principles and global ambitions. The catalogue and exhibition were edited and curated by Antawan I. Byrd, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Adom Getachew, and Matthew S. Witkovsky and will travel from The Art Institute of Chicago to MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani, Barcelona, Barbican Centre, London, and KANAL–Centre Pompidou, Brussels.

The design of the book takes its cues from the diverse printed ephemera that make up the show. The typographic palette of Align by Greg Gazdowicz of Commercial Type and Travelogue by David Jon Walker shows the multiplicity of Pan African typographic aesthetics. Align, a variable serif typeface that loses its serif as it gets bolder, resembles the typography on an Algerian cinema poster for Egyptian Films, and its variable forms show that Pan Africanism is not a monolith. Travelogue letter forms are based on a hand-drawn masthead from the 1946-47 editions of Victor Hugo Green’s Green Book. The scale of the publication is based off the Nancy Canard, Negro Anthology from 1933 that brings a heft and weight to the publication, but bound in thin boards to signify the many periodicals in the exhibition. Lastly, the color palette of the publication uses custom spot colors in brown and a bright fluorescent green that are mixed with four-color process reds and other tones to create a unique take on the iconic Pan African Red, Green, and Black color story.

Focusing on its cultural expression, this book presents a rich selection of the visual, sonic, and other creative forms that have emerged throughout Pan-Africanism’s evolution. Among the nearly two hundred artists represented from across the continent and the African diaspora are Beauford Delaney, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Hoyt William Fuller, Wifredo Lam, Simone Leigh, Ernest Mancoba, Zanele Muholi, Kawira Mwirichia, Cauleen Smith, Alma Thomas, and George Albert Yon.

Reflecting Pan-Africanism’s ideals of diversity and dialogue as well as its aspirations to egalitarianism, essays from more than a dozen scholars, artists, and practitioners speak to a range of themes and places, while discussing works in all media made or circulated outside the infrastructure of fine art, including LP albums, illustrated magazines, and manifestos.

Designer and Art Director
Silas Munro
Designer and Art Director
Randa Hadi
Designer and Art Director
Brian Johnson
Designer
Sadeem Yacoub
Designer
Darrian Newman
Photographer
Charles White - JW Pictures
Project link