The Handmaid's Tale is a tale of terror as well as a warning. A dystopian future called Gilead is chillingly misogynistic where women are reduced to strict categories: Martha for housework and cooking, Jezebels, Eyes, Angels, infertile Wives and potentially fertile Handmaids. It is beautifully written with lots of flashbacks of Offred, the protagonist's name, of how things devolved into the horrors of her present. It exposes the politics of reproduction and male sexuality taken to extremes of violence that are shocking and, yet, probably seemed one possible future.

The brief from my typography class at Miami Ad School was to create the book cover for The Handmaid's Tale using only: 1 Letter. 1 Font. 1 Colour.

The Handmaid’s tale is about a totalitarian society, so my approach for the covers

was to keep it very straightforward via a strong iconography. I used the letter O as every handmaid in the story is forced to take a new name by adding “Of” to the name of their commanders. The entire cover was made using shades of Red. I wanted to use the various events that happened in the book to show a glimpse of the story. I abandoned the ones that were based off too specific moments from the book and went with a minimal and metaphorical approach.

In the book, sport places which used to be places of fun and pleasure were turned into dormitories or prison yards where every sin is accounted for. I took this visual and developed it with 3 Os in varying colours of red. It closely resembled the top view of a handmaid on the floor. The design as a whole also represented a minimal symbol of the dystopian Gilead government. I used Futura as my font which created a juxtaposition of harsh truths - as the author suggests that the events in the book might as well be our future.