Ascender is very proud to be assisting the Prince George’s County African-American Museum and Cultural Center with multimedia web creative and design. Among our first tasks: To design promotional materials for their upcoming May exhibition: “Coming Home: How the African-American Presence in World War II Shaped Prince George’s County”   

We jumped at this opportunity. To get started we studied archival images that were provided by the museum. Then we studied U.S. propaganda poster art from the period taking a particular interest in those with African-American representations.

The first thing we noticed was how today you can walk into any restaurant, bar –maybe even your local hardware store—and find reproductions of Uncle Sam’s glowering “I Need You to Serve…” poster or the “We Can Do It” poster which celebrated American women serving in factories… Both are pretty exceptional.  But, have you ever seen posters featuring Heavy Weight boxing champ, Joe Louis or celebrated Navy hero Dorie Miller?

Nor had we… The reasons why these images haven’t been more prevalent over time are far too many to discuss on this site. Point is, we thought we throw our hat into the ring and design a couple of our own. What was our goal? To create something that celebrated black men and women who served their country and portray them with valiance, strength and a dash of rugged inspiration without being too emotionally heavy-handed.

When all else failed, we looked to Clint Eastwood… The posters for  “Flags of Our Fathers” were contemporary, elegant and thoughtful. So, we thought, ‘Why not combine aproaches and let the client decide?’

With any luck, what we create will portray these many great men and women with the honor they deserve.