Another of my favourite creatives is the artist and Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party; Emory Douglas. I can’t remember exactly when I first came across his work, but I feel as though I was engaging with it a long time before I realised who Douglas was.

I wasn’t your typical thirteen year old girl – I had an early fascination with the Civil Rights Movement. Having grown up in an incredibly mixed part of East London, the idea that in my parents lifetime, people were suffering due to segregation was insane to me. Around this time my mum bought me the autobiography of Malcolm X.

Though I was pretty young when I started reading about the Civil Rights Movement, my mum was really open to what I was interested in. By thirteen, after learning about Fred Hampton and Marcus Garvey, I asked for a book on ‘The Black Panthers’, which she found on Amazon.

I’ve always been lucky to have a mum that nurtured my curiosity, even if it seemed odd to her. She never suggested it was unusual, but it may have been strange – a teenage white girl trying to identify with the history and struggle of the civil rights movement – but she thought it was great that I was into history and the lessons these books offered.

I imagine it was around that time that I first encountered Emory Douglas’ work. His official title was the ‘Minister of Culture’ for the Black Panther Party. He was an incredible artist, graphic designer and creative that to some extent branded the Black Panther Movement. Everything down to the posters, the Black Panthers’ newspaper – which ran for a few decades, with hundreds of thousands of copies that were printed weekly – it was such a distinct and powerful organisation of which he played a massive part.

I’m really into branding, I think today when you look at how humans naturally brand themselves, it’s fascinating. These days young people naturally brand themselves, with styling, graphics and more, demonstrating how synonymous branding is with everyday life.

Likewise with rappers, the Internet has given artists independence, allowing musicians to transform with an image that their fans can buy into. Back in the sixties and seventies when Emory Douglas was active, branding was for corporations – not for activist groups, though it was vital to the movement, Branding wasn’t even recognised as a concept the way it is now, but Douglas crafted a trademark visual identity for the Black Panthers.

I believe Emory Douglas took inspiration from the Russian revolution posters of the early 20th Century, as graphically you can see a strong similarity; even in the linear formatting of Douglas’ pieces. In an interview between Emory Douglas and Dazed & Confused, I read that the artwork of the Russian revolution played a great role in inspiring pieces that rose out of the Black Panthers movement. Whilst their ideologies aren’t exactly similar, both groups are both very Left Wing, suggesting the revolutionary thought pattern goes hand in hand with this style of graphics and art.

Douglas is a great man for his political beliefs and he achieved some incredible things in his life, but the visual identity he accompanied with that is something I greatly admire. I would love to see an exhibition of his one day, he’s someone I think that everyone should know about.