The font for the Taxi Driver movie t-shirt design is inspired by how the title appears in the credit sequence while the color scheme is taken from the famous yellow, black and white checked cabs of New York City.
The film is about lonliness and isolation in a society full of scum. The story uses a taxi driver as a metaphor for this, which has some irony to it because even in a city full of people, it can feel like the loneliest place on earth. Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle is in constant motion, moving amongst these people, but never connecting.
Fuelled by his isolation and desperation, at the films climax, after a rampage through a brothel, a severely injured Travis turns his gun on himself but is out of ammunition. When the police arrive, Bickle stares at them and smiles, pointing his finger like a gun at his head, resulting in this iconic image. The image is placed awkwardly on the bottom of the poster, almost on the outside looking in, juxtaposed with films unifying presidential campaign logo ‘We Are The People’
