Greenwood Rising

At this point in my career, I’m wanting to pin down the types of design projects I want to work on. After some consideration, I decided it would be impactful to design a series of billboards to help promote Greenwood Rising – a local, Black Wall Street history museum. I felt the most impactful way to grab drivers' attention was to keep the color palette and copy striking and simple. The first billboard in the series combines a photo I took of fire and the text ‘Black Wall Street. Lost but not forgotten’. The photo I took resembled buildings on fire, symbolizing the destruction of Greenwood District/Black Wall Street. The second billboard features a tree on fire with the text ‘Shining a light on black history’. To me, the burning tree represents the massacre of entire family trees during the massacre of 1921. Shining a light on black history is Greenwood Rising’s mission. The third billboard features a solitary white man with the word 'Riot' crossed out, and Massacre written underneath. The text is simple, the complete devastation of Tulsa’s Greenwood District was the fault of the white community. This was no ‘riot’, this was a violent attack, a massacre, on Tulsa’s black community.