Designing A Cover For T’ARTPRESS Magazine
I’m a huge fan of T’ArtPress - a London based magazine and events organisation championing queer and underrepresented artists, writers, storytellers, poets, makers and creators - so when they asked me to design the cover for their third issue, I jumped at the chance!
My piece ‘UNREAL’ (below) had already been featured in issue No.2 and I had previously performed at their monthly event - T’Artopia - too, so I felt like part of the family already and really wanted to pull something special out of the creative bag for the cover of this amazing publication.
The title and subject matter for the new issue was Queering and I decided to explore this concept from my own perspective as a trans, intersex, non-binary and neurodivergent person.
For myself, queering takes many forms - as it can be the feeling of being ‘othered’, set aside or seen as ‘less than’ - it can be the feeling that my presence is somehow ‘queering’ a situation which can have both positive and negative contexts - or it can be the feeling of empowerment that comes from queering as a form of deliberately challenging gender and sexual normativity, neuro-normativity and, as I see it, the ability to extend these challenges to other prevailing ideas or ‘normalcy’ stemming from capitalist and colonialist systems and regimes.
I created some drafts of images that showed characters with ambiguous gender, sex, race, body size and shape. I accentuated some of their shadows, essentially splitting them in two, to highlight the duality of being queer or othered, and the different ways that we are seen in contrasting contexts and spaces.
I created a smooth, sleek design and busy, textured design - both with characters tumbling chaotically amongst the shapes and colours of life - reaching out to each other and providing community, strength, allyship and support.
I often use shapes in my work to add to the visual language. A circle can represent a wheelchair user, but it can also represent a sun or a moon, or a ball of trauma or joy. I often use colours to help guide the viewer towards discerning between these meanings - but for this piece I used texture too - and I feel this added an art nouveau aesthetic to the overall design.
Eventually, I split the most chaotic design into two separate pieces. One was used for the cover, and one for the inlay:
I hope you enjoyed reading about my design process for this piece. If you like what you see please support my work by interacting with this post and clicking the ‘like’ button or giving my profile a follow.
You can also find me on VERO @cult_of_rae - visit my website - or donate to my Buy Me A Coffee page (links to all of these are on my profile page)
Please also take some time to visit https://www.t-artpress.co.uk and see all of the wonderful things that Finn, Coco and Lucie have been doing with this fantastic publication and platform!
Rae is an intersex, trans, non binary artist and activist from London, UK. Working across multiple disciplines, their work calls into question the very foundations of predisposed physical, biological and metaphysical notions upon which prevailing contemporary culture is built. Rae’s work highlights intersex, trans and neurodiverse experiences, places non binary bodies as visually centric, and transcends intersections between colonialist and imperialist domination of gender, race, culture, environment, mental health, neurodivergence and sex.
