This year, 2018, the brief of ‘Penguin Student Award’ was set across three categories: ‘Animal Farm’ by George Orwell, ‘A Brief History of Time’ by Stephen Hawking and Noughts and Crosses’ by Malorie Blackman. On the whole, there are challenges about how does the book cover break existing concepts with considering contemporary readerships.

‘Blackman, the author of Noughts and Crosses, placed our world in an alternate reality and hope to show how our perspectives colour our thinking. And this idea leads to my main visual metaphor, a shadow which is inspired by Kumi Yamashita’s work.

Using the shadow, I illustrate Callum and Sephy’s character and their hidden and desires. The shadow of them shows how they feel and react to the social system which might hook the reader and give them a hint about the main plot indirectly.