This terrific project came to Cerebral Lounge through our friends at REV, the creative agency in charge of producing a promo campaign for the new CNN docuseries, “The People v. The Klan.” The REV team reached out to us for help with the graphics and overall look.

When we first heard about the show, we were intrigued. How could such a major moment in history – the bankrupting of the Ku Klux Klan in 1987 – have flown under the radar all these years? Beulah Mae Donald’s story clearly needed to be told, and we were excited to be a part of the team.

REV’s Gary Holland came up with an extensive range of concepts in response to CNN’s creative brief, for which we developed visual looks. Once the concepts were selected, we contributed graphics, color and some VFX, and the spots were ultimately cut by campaign editor Christian White. Assets for these promos being limited, we were pushed from the beginning to focus heavily on design, resulting in these creative pieces of work.

INITIAL CONCEPTS

Frames from three of the styles that were created early in the project. We ultimately narrowed it down to two different styles, and were able to move forward with both.

INITIAL CONCEPTS

Frames from three of the styles that were created early in the project. We ultimately narrowed it down to two different styles, and were able to move forward with both.

STORY

The first one, titled “Story,” leaned on stock and archival footage with simple, bold type to strike a dramatic and gritty tone. Our colorist played with saturation, isolating color to emphasize the subject in some images, while in others bringing out the whiteness of the cloth and the skin tone of the people beneath it.

HER

The second style, “Her,” aimed to inspire and empower. To accomplish this effort, talented mixed-media visual artist Victoria Cassinova was brought on to help capture Beulah’s strength and determination by creating the powerful portrait illustrations you see here.

Victoria’s unique style perfectly matched the tone of the campaign and we were thrilled to bring her portraits to life and also create cohesive text cards.

TRAILER