Sophia Qin
Artist + Designer
Female Oppression
Book Jacket
Background
For the final project of my Digital Media Class at CSSSA (pre-college), I was given the task to make a book with photoshop and all the related digital tools I learned during pre-college. Immediately, I thought of continuing my series of drawings I started around females and conformity.
I looked back in history about the treatment of women. Especially in the past, women had to suffer from controlling husbands, cultural norms of being quiet and obedient, and a whole plethora of oppression. I reviewed images of Victorian women in housewife uniforms and tight, long, dresses. What interested me was the conforming aspect that women had to go through.
I started drawing things related to my research to think of ways of creating the book cover to relate to women's conformity. This also helped me think of ideas to put inside the pages.
Research
Ideation
Firstly, I created six different pages on photoshop illustrating my concept. I was thinking about binding them unconventionally I then looked at examples of books online (Stefan Sagmeister) to get inspiration.
I sketched out ideas and came up with an idea. It was a book jacket envelope with a female figure window out in the front. Pages go inside the book jacket and can be assembled in different ways to create unique designs on the cover. This also helped communicate the idea of the woman going through different ordeals as seen through the cover.
Prototyping
I bought separate special black paper and photoshopped what cut-out silhouettes I wanted on the back and front. I then put it into a laser-cutting printer to cut out the sillohettes This created the back and front cover and sewed them together to create the book envelope. Next, I put all the pages in.
