These 10 artists are creating stunning images to protest racial injustice

Illustrations have the power to take even the most complex ideas and boil them down to something simple and concise. They can take something ordinary and change the way you see the world. And in times of turmoil, this imagery can create unity.

There is, of course, a rich history linking artists to protest movements and revolutionary politics, as well as propaganda. In the early years of the Labor Movement, posters depicting heroic workers became something to rally behind. The power of graphic design proved equally effective during the first World War when the illustrator James Montgomery Flagg’s “I want YOU” poster become such an effective recruiting tool that it’s still synonymous with our military today. During the Civil Rights Era, the raised black fist became a badge of unity, strength, and power. And most recently, following the formation of Black Lives Matter, artist portraits of the people whose lives have been lost to police brutality have spread on social media, forcing the public to remember the dead as people, not just statistics. 

As the associate art director for Fast Company, I spend my days with words and images. Shuffling them around, finding them homes, and ultimately figuring out a way for them to tell a story, together. But I also like to think of our art as telling its own story—creating a second way for people to connect to our journalism and understand the present. Artwork, in addition to the written word, is how these moments become history.