With my original typography only solution, I felt that some of the text was hard to read and didn't fully represent a visual to the song, leading me to mess around more with texture and shape that brought me to my final design. 

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In my second design, I wanted to provide a visual that was more about the song itself, rather than the surface-level concepts presented in the title. Because the song's main purpose is to satirize the widespread negative stereotypes about immigrants, I wanted to portray that in my design. Between raping about evading border police, manufacturing fake visas and the line "all I wanna do is *gunshots* *ka-ching of cash registers* and take your money," there has been a fair share of controversy surrounding the song, as some believe that it glorifies violence and criminality, maybe to the point of even advocating for terrorism. In response, people have either censored the gunshots, banished it from the radio or added an "explicit" label to the cover art.

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With this being said, M.I.A. herself has turned these ideas down, as she wrote it with the intention of outlining all the prejudices that dark-skinned foreigners face when in Western society. "Paper Planes" is essentially the U.S. society's perception of immigrants, as the fantasy of attaining the "American Dream" drives them to gangsterism, as they face the grim reality of minimum-wage employment, potentially causing them to sell drugs and add "lethal poison" to the system.

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"[Paper Planes is] about immigrants appearing really threatening to society. But not being so. Because, by the time you've finished working a 20-hour shift, you're so tired you just want to get home to the family. I don't think immigrants are that threatening to society at all. They're just happy they've survived some war somewhere."

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Because of this, I used an image from Pexels of The Statue of Liberty. Not only is it a symbol of the American Dream that the song focuses on, but it is also one of the first monuments that people see when immigrating to the United States. After having the dollar sign at the top by the title, I realized it was too much and decided to take it out for the final design. With the New York city skyline, I wanted the background to represent golden hour, as the background on the buildings also symbolizes what people come to the U.S. for (money).

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Unlike some of my other design work, I wanted each design to have its own unique approach. Because of this, I decided to stick with the theme of money and chasing fame through the American Dream, but did this by using a tiger to symbolize royalty, as it's an animal that's used to show that in a variety of other media. With the colors, I chose to go with more bright, neon tones, as I thought that would represent the upbeat nature of the song well.