Really interesting interview with the illustrator of the US cover for The Hate U Give and the way the original concept has been adapted for the movie poster:
The cover for Angie Thomas’s acclaimed Black Lives Matter–inspired novel, The Hate U Give, began, fittingly, as a piece of protest art. Back in 2015, Debra Cartwright, the artist who made the illustration, was sitting at her desk at People magazine in Times Square while a protest over the death of Freddie Gray took place on the street below. Unable to knock off work to join in, Cartwright did the next best thing: She sketched an illustration on Photoshop of a woman holding up a protest sign. Only her puff of curly hair is visible above the edge of a poster with the words “End Police Terror.” The piece went viral, and eventually, Angie Thomas saw it on Instagram and suggested it to her publisher as cover material. Last week, the official poster for the movie adaptation, due out in October, was released online; the poster is closely modeled on Cartwright’s work.