Sunday, June 16, 2013

Everyday Sexism Book Cover Contest

You may know @EverydaySexism from their #FBRape campaign. By targeting advertisers, they were able to bring considerable pressure to bear on Facebook and were successful in forcing a change in policy on images that glorified violence against women. If this news greets you for the first time I recommend the founder's Independent article, The day the Everyday Sexism project won and Facebook changed its image. I also strongly recommend following @EverydaySexism on Twitter - especially if, like me, you thought sexism is no longer a problem.

They're releasing a book and the publisher is accepting submissions for the jacket design. The brief caught my eye:
"We're looking for a design that represents the thousands of women who are #shoutingback and we want you to help us create the perfect jacket to represent this movement and this exciting new extension of the project."
 I'm a literal minded sort of chap so I downloaded pictures of everyone (all genders) that follows @EverydaySexism and rearranged them so they resembled Laura Bates, the founder of the project. It's a large image. There are, after all, 52,000 profile pictures in it. Here's a zoomed in shot of Bates's left eye. Note the constituent profile pictures:

And here's the full image:

Depending on your browser, you might find it easier to open it in a separate window.

Want to track down where your profile picture is? The X,Y coordinates of all images used are in this file, with position 1,1 referring to the top left hand corner. The image is 200*260 profile pictures in size. Unfortunately, not all images were a good fit for the picture. If your picture is bright blue, for example, there's nowhere I could easily squeeze it in.

Is this my entry for the Everyday Sexism book cover? In a way, yes, but I like to think of it more as showcasing a technique that could be useful for the end product. I'm happy to work with anyone else who's come up with a design, and I'm not pushed on credit. If you'd like to work together do get in touch.

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