"Farewell to Matyora" by Rasputin (2021)

Created using colored pencil and ink. Aim was to convey "tension, reality of modernization, and effects of rapid, forced industrialization upon pre-Soviet, rural Russia. Matyora as a village island was personified into a singular peasant woman. The power of the Soviet government that ordered the dam’s construction (which hurt the village) was represented by the hammer, red hands, and red stars on the hammer, axe, and nails, since those colors and symbols appear on the Soviet flag. The fires set to houses on the island were represented by flames on the upper left arm's sleeve. Floodwaters drowning the island and washing away its graves were represented by waves on the upper right arm's sleeve. Turquoise on her dress, arms, and near her neck, are markings to show Matyora is an '[island]-about-to-be-flooded' and her people are all 'citizens-about-to-be-flooded' (Rasputin, 18). The most obvious reason for her demise was the rise of industrialization and new technology, represented by gears and smokestacks on the lower left arm's sleeve. Changes due to time were shown with clocks on the lower right arm's sleeve. The loss of traditions was represented by the woman wearing a sarafan (traditional Russian dress) while being attacked. The chopping down of graves was represented by the axe, so the cross would resemble a grave marker (hence the tilt of the title over the cross, like the roof over a traditional grave marker), whose desecration is the first sign of the island’s ruin. The house matches Matyora to show she defines her villagers. It was drawn with reference to traditional Russian village houses. Her halo is the color of tsar larch tree needles, since they were yellow during Matyora's death, and the tree symbolized resistance. Thus, she glowed with the light of resistance, even in death. A Russian Orthodox cross suggests the expected shift away from Christian religious values during the Soviet era. The final goal was to show how inhumane, chaotic, and violent the loss of homes can be" (Rao, 2021).

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"The Suicide Pact" by Dr. Advikolanu Muralidhar (2021)

Book cover and jacket designed using Adobe Illustrator for "The Suicide Pact," an English play by Dr. Advikolanu Muralidhar, a South Indian Telugu poet and writer. The central lesson is highlighted on the back cover. Each element from the set design and the themes/events themselves are illustrated. The play centers on a professor and his artistic wife, Lalitha, who despise one another, themselves, and their lives. One night, they draft a suicide pact. Since the play occurs over one night, the book spine, and the book cover's ceiling fan contains a single moon. The ceiling fan, with a sari and tie hanging from it, implies potential death looming over the characters' heads. The eye in the fan represents the audience bearing witness, who ultimately decide the story's conclusion. One line from the fan spirals into two, connecting to "U" and "I" to symbolize individuals, once united in love, now estranged. The wall has several symbols: There are two portraits of a hanging, one with and one without the head attached, to show both potential conclusions to the story. There is Lalitha's scribble next to the hangings, as she laments the meaninglessness of art and art critique. A sketch of a mother and child is drawn by Lalitha yet slashed to show her lost dream of motherhood. A question mark and quotation marks show how the majority of the play is dialogue with existential questions. The quotation marks also hint at the professor's monologue about the pointlessness of speech. A cage from the set design provides a feeling of being trapped in marriage/life. Cigarettes, a watch, a fountain pen, bangles, an ashtray and the suicide pact itself, are laid out on a table. The mangalsutra (wedding necklace) lies discarded, to show the dissolvement of marital bonds. The professor's glasses are cracked, to show distorted perspectives. The table doubles as the Bombay apartment where the characters reside, with shattered windows on one side and windows with the words "You, Me" scribbled on in Telugu. "You, me" is a phrase repeated when the characters are in love, yet those words change their meaning that night. The last letter of "Me" and the first letter of "You" are the same in Telugu, hence they merge initially (to symbolize unity in love) and gradually separate and reflect (to symbolize distortion of the self and separation in marriage) on the apartment and on the back cover's lower border.

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