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COVER ART

In one of my design courses at the University of Arizona, we were given a prompt to make a cover for a piece of media. I chose to make a DVD cover for one of my favorite films, Coonskin, by Ralph Bakshi. Coonskin is a movie that tackles America’s history with minstrelsy and blackface specifically in animation. This extremely subversive and satirical film understands and creates conversations about racist portrayals in media, specifically in the mid 20th century. With all of this in mind, I decided to repurpose a Minstrel era advertisement. Distorting the figure’s face and head allows for the perception of blackface and minstrelsy to, literally, be put on its head, which is something the film itself exemplifies. With such a large, glaring, and distorted depiction of blackface as the cover’s centerpiece, I chose to juxtapose it with a classic serif typeface. I wanted this design to subvert societal norms that often hide the disgusting history of blackface by forcing the viewer to look at it in its plentiful eyes.
Below are other examples from the same assignment.