Lately I’ve been leaning hard into organizing, and finding ways to contribute design toward all kinds of prisoner support projects. I’ve also been leaning into the lettering styles I’ve been developing for the last few years, and using them to create compositions that are more dynamic than would be easily achieved with type. The result is a collection of print material promoting local events and resources that looks really cohesive when displayed together— though given the range of dates (all since passed), I never got a chance to display all of them together. So I’m doing it here!
The Community Jail Support PDX 2025 Guide was the first thing that put my new color printer to work. I’ve distributed hundreds of these myself, and even better, I’ve seen many in circulation that were printed or photocopied by others.
When Community Jail Support decided to organize an onboarding event, the color palette, imagery, and style were already established. I handed out a bunch of the low-ink colorway in quarter sheets while tabling for CJS, but printed out the full color version to display.
In July, I was asked to create a flyer promoting Mass Defense Hotline, to be posted and handed out at protest locations. Shortly after, Defense Fund PDX needed a flyer soliciting donations. These were designed to be printed on yellow paper for visibility, though the digital color version benefits from the use of a purple that’s impossible to achieve through process printing on yellow. They share a color palette since these groups are associated and work closely together.
Later on, Defense Fund PDX put together a fundraiser street fair. Once again, the color palette, imagery, and style were already established, so I just had to use them to compose something new.
Then there was a need to widely distribute the Mass Defense Hotline number, with information about what kinds of services it provides. I printed off tons of these little info cards. They, of course, family nicely with the rest of the Mass Defense Hotline/Defense Fund PDX flyers.
I also had the honor of designing the flyer for this year’s local Running Down the Walls, a long-established annual 5K to benefit anarchist prisoners through the Anarchist Black Cross Federation Warchest.
When a need arose for a zine with information about the recipients of the funds, I jumped at the opportunity to create one to match.
Overall I'm really proud of the visual language developed throughout this set. I've grown a lot more comfortable with lettering in the process— and with drawing hands!
Though I love working in color and feel these flyers really benefit from it, I’ve also created a grayscale-optimized version of every single one of them, for easy reproduction. They look great together in their own right!
If you’d like me to design a flyer for your event or resource, talk to me! I do movement design work selectively, but for free.
