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My Year of Rest and Relaxation Book Cover

Graphic Design

2024

The novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh is a story about a wealthy socialite coping with her parent’s death and mental illness. She decides the solution to her misery is to isolate and medicate herself in an attempt to sleep through the entire year. She pushes everything aside for her sole focus on spending as much time unconscious as possible, intending to awaken renewed and reclaim an enjoyment for life.

I selected the colors black, white, and a pop of fluorescent pink to supplement the serious tone of the story while also representing the vanity of the narrator. I visualized the heavy feelings the main character goes through and depicted how I had imagined her when I read the book, conveyed through an image of a sleeping woman enclosed in a void, representing the isolation of the character. The photo is distorted through the use of halftone to mimic the hazy and unfocused feeling of being half awake and half asleep. I chose to have the text dominate the majority of the space on the cover to give off a cramped and uncomfortable feeling.

This alternative cover is a bit lighter than the other, the illustration conveys the narrator’s issues with addiction and escapism through substances. Despite the morbid subject matter of the book, the writing contains a lot of dark humor, so I opted for a punchy, surrealist look to provide a feeling of relief. The character is a heavy smoker, despite her friend wanting her to quit, so I chose for her to be wrapped up in a cigarette, representing how she’s unable to escape from the lifestyle she’s created.

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