A HARSH REALITY

Book Cover, “A Harsh Reality: Iran Through the Eyes of a Teenager” by Arya Nourizadeh

The biggest inspiration of the design is actually my own diary. If I’m being honest I haven’t used my personal diary at all ever since I got my work one for free - but that’s not the point. A black cover with a golden sketch of a bee. Simple but so great. I wanted to emulate this with Arya’s book, and it made sense since it does read like a diary.

Typography is always so important. Choosing and pairing typefaces in itself should warrant a separate genre of art. For this I initially thought I would use Helvetica. Who doesn’t love Helvetica? That’s the problem. Everyone loves Helvetica (including me). I wanted to avoid being too cliché, so I took inspiration from a book called “Empireland” by Sathnam Sanghera. Empireland is about how Britain’s imperial past still shapes the present.

The central focus is a hand holding up a fist of hair. This is taken straight from a photograph by Ozan Guzelce. The protests against the Islamic Republic in 2022 gave us some of the most powerful pictures so far this decade.