Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz is a 17th century poet, author, musician, and nun, who defended the rights of women to be educated. For this project, I wanted to create a new design for Sor Juana's poetry and began with creating a book cover and layout of her work to appeal to present-day women, history and poetry lovers. This pocket-sized book is intended to be a special edition and sold at novelty gift stores as well as in mainstream bookstores like Barnes & Noble.
Category: Editorial/Publication Design
Software Used: Illustrator and InDesign.
To promote Sor Juana's work to a larger audience, I reviewed how current female activists and writers publications are designed and saw that many are represented with bold bright colors, like with Malala Yousafzai and Ruth Bader Ginsberg. I also wanted to design a book cover that represented Sor Juana's poems in an authentic way, and sketched out imagery that I thought visually represented her poems and essays. The final result was a Phoenix that I drew in Illustrator; in Mexican culture, Sor Juana is referred as the "Phoenix of Mexico".
I initially thought I would focus on Sor Juana's epigrams, which are short witty observances and satires, so the illustration I created in this first draft was meant to represent the gaze.
I decided to continue pursuing another book cover for Sor Juana and explored the idea of Sor Juana as a participant in a poetry slam, but thought that the book title needed to have more context. I then chose a title from one of her poems and created an illustration to accompany it to give the book cover a strong visual image.
I felt that the second draft did not represent the author in a genuine way, and continued my research, settling on the image of a Phoenix. After a few sketches, I also felt satisfied in that the shape of the phoenix loosely represented the curves in the letters S and J. So the Phoenix became the focus of my book cover.
