“We Will Not Rest In Peace” borrows its name from a protest chant and poster series created by ACT UP in the 1980s. With this brazen message in mind, the poster chronicles some of the most significant protest art of the AIDS crisis, elucidating them further with a timeline of pertinent events. 

Researched and designed over four weeks, the poster draws typographic and compositional influence from many of the items it catalogues. Much of the challenge of this project was delicately structuring large groupings of text while staying faithful to the language of protest. This resulted in the split composition, which creates a poster-within-a-poster effect, allowing space for both the aggressive, dissenting title while not compromising typographic nuance.

I also created a motion accompaniment, which can be viewed below.

For the second part of the project, I created a short animated teaser for the poster. With motion, I saw an opportunity to draw connections between the works and their contexts in a way that was not possible in print. The video is bold, assertive, and rythmic, built around the protest chants that would so often accompany the art. The audio thus introduces another layer of historical context not present in the poster. (Be sure to unmute the video!)

Further, I take the liberty to splice the posters together in the second half of the teaser. Withholding their complete images, I both tease the content of the poster and illuminate new meanings within the art.