Zerofee. Good Thinking:

The Angola 3 – Robert King, Albert Wood­fox and Her­man Wal­lace – were all impris­oned on dif­fer­ent charges in Louisiana’s Angola prison in the late 1960s. In 1972, Albert and Her­man were con­victed of the mur­der of a prison guard; Robert was linked to the case by the author­i­ties, but not charged. As a result, all three were removed to soli­tary con­fine­ment and suf­fered inhu­mane and unjust treat­ment last­ing, in the case of Robert King (released after plead­ing a lesser charge), almost 30 years. Albert and Her­man spent 36 years in such con­di­tions, only being removed to max­i­mum secu­rity when lawyers and activists took up their cases and brought the details of their charges and tri­als into ques­tion. They remain behind bars. Robert King has, since his release, worked to bring atten­tion to the plight of the Angola 3 and the charges against Albert were dropped in March 2008. Despite this, he and Her­man remain incarcerated.

Zero­fee had an oppor­tu­nity in the sum­mer of 2008 to con­tribute to the ongo­ing appeal for jus­tice for the Angola 3 by donat­ing awareness-raising, broad­sheet for­mat lit­er­a­ture designed in con­junc­tion with Bondage for Free­dom, Coco de Mer’s cam­paign­ing organ­i­sa­tion lead by Sam Rod­dick. We worked closely with Sam to design and pro­duce the broad­sheet in the space of a sin­gle week­end and the out­come is a 12 page nar­ra­tive by Robert King, accom­pa­nied by facts about the Angola 3, their case and the sit­u­a­tions faced by oth­ers like them in the US prison system.

The broad­sheet is a good exam­ple of how cre­ative free­dom, focussed with time and bud­getary pres­sure, cou­pled with a great client can result in pow­er­ful, donated design work that helped bring a cause to the atten­tion of many peo­ple who would not, per­haps, have shown inter­est. Ini­tially dis­trib­uted at protests, but since reprinted in a smaller tabloid for­mat for var­i­ous other sit­u­a­tions, it has been an extremely pos­i­tive project for us and the visual/tactile result is one we’re par­tic­u­larly proud of. The typo­graphic treat­ment (fea­tur­ing Rian Hughes’ Hawksmoor and Zuzana Licko’s Mrs Eaves) res­onated with those involved in the ongo­ing cam­paign and was later applied to a very quick title sequence (read: briefed and com­pleted in a mat­ter of hours) for a music video made by Quiet Storm Films called ‘Bars’:

For more infor­ma­tion about the Angola 3, please visit www.angola3.org