Responding to the brief of 'Belief Systems', I decided to study feminism as a belief system.
Sketch of a Tibetan goddess statue from a visit to 'Tibet's Secret Temple'.
I knew I wanted to create a style that combined type and illustration seamlessly, and during the interim crit my tutor advised me to visit the William Morris Gallery.
Primary research from the William Morris Gallery.
The intricacy of the designs combined with the beautiful blackletter really inspired me to create a prayer book.
I knew I wanted to keep the process as similar as possible to how these books would have been made in the 1800s so I decided to use the technique of letterpress.
Unfortunately it took surprisingly long to set my type, so I had to work extremely quickly and sacrifice a little of the patience that letterpress requires.
Another obstacle I stumbled across was the fact that there wasn't a full set of blackletter in the CSM letterpress.
However I still wanted to retain this element, so I set the type in Baskerville italic and then hand lettered the blackletter.
Experiments with letterpress to determine where the type would sit on the page.
It was noted at the final crit that the book I produced could be pushed forward much more, although letterpress was a very valuable technique to use, it was so time consuming that it hindered me from pushing the overall aesthetics of the book as much as I could.
Moreover, feedback was that the blackletter and the Baskerville italic did not read well together, so for this reason when I remade the book (see below) I decided to hand letter all the type, in order to have more control over the final layout.
After the crit, I remade the book, shown here. This involved many hours of planning and erasing the hand lettering, in hindsight I wish I'd had the time to study proper calligraphy, however I'm much happier with the overall feel, bound with a hard cover rather than a soft one and using white thread instead of brown made the whole product feel much more professional. I feel like the reworked final outcome really communicates the fact that feminism is a time honoured tradition, even though in the 1800s Mary Wollstonecraft was attributed to be the founder, for years when there has been inequality in any part of the world, there have been those that fought for justice. I wanted to emphasise that feminism is not a new fad, which society can be interested in if the cause is seen as 'trendy', it is a respected movement that has soldiered on through generations. For this reason, I'm really happy with the final outcome as it conveys an atmosphere of a really precious belief system, one that should be honoured along with any great religion.
As a feminist, this topic and how we can educate society on the inequality of genders is an ongoing passion for me. Taking the project further, I'd like to explore the intersectionality of feminism and what the movement means to different people throughout the world- for example to a transgender woman in New York it might mean not getting catcalled on the street, whereas for a woman in Saudi Arabia it might mean the right to vote. Being born in Britain yet coming from an Indian heritage, this idea that intersectional feminism exists for different kinds of people is an incredibly interesting concept and one I wish to explore further in my work.