Shout Book Cover

A memoir told through broken poetry, Laurie Halse Anderson announces her story, and the story of many others, about sexual assault, and the circumstances that previously stopped her from discussing it. Anderson pieces fragmented parts of her experiences together to form a meaningful outlook on a wider issue; If silence is the fuel of abuse, Anderson demands the power to reclaim autonomy, agency, and authority. Not only does Shout give victims of sexual assault the space to exorcise their grief, but it’s also a comforting reminder that you are not the sum of your experiences, nor reduced to your biological sex.

In the process of making this cover, I relied heavily on bird imagery. I had liked the idea of using a phoenix for self-recovery, but that felt too on the nose. Birds, however, are depictions of freedom, and I wanted to have the figure shouting out these birds, to show the feeling of relief that comes when you'reable give yourself the power to shout out against abuse. Stylistically, I had gone in different directions for each book cover; For Shout, I was inspired by the line language of block printing. For the type I had a warped rectangle, drawn with the same texture used throughout the illustration, and I used a polygonal lasso tool to cut out geometric shapes, creating my letterforms. As an illustrator becoming more interested in design, I wanted to be able to fully integrate my drawn mark with the designed layout of the full jacket. A theme of Shout that I wanted to reflect in my composition was the cycle of abuse and breaking it. Not only is silence a generally passed down trauma response, but when one person is able to speak up about their experiences, a new cycle is able to begin- One where we keep talking out against abuse, and the systems that perpetuate abuse can be ended.