The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: an interpretation of a classic novel

Abstract

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum was written in 1900 about a young girl who got swept away to a magical land and has to find her way back home. I decided to use the idea of quilting as Dorothy is raised on a farm and quilting is a homey hobby, which also relates to the idea of “there’s no place like home.” This idea is shown throughout the inside content with patches as the chapter titles.

The imagery for the cover is the gingham pattern of Dorothy’s dress and symbols for each character. The blue gingham is for Dorothy’s dress, the green is for the Emerald City, and the yellow is for the yellow brick road. The shoe is for Dorothy, the medal for courage and the Cowardly Lion, the rose for a heart, love and the Tinman, and the lightbulb for a brain, intelligence and the Scarecrow.

For the layout of the cover I did a patchwork to give it a cozy and handmade feel. For the inside content, I used a manuscript grid with appropriate margins for the printing process.

The type I chose for the title was a vector called Embroidered Fabric that I then turned into a typeface and traced over to make it look stitched. The body typeface is Essay text as it has good readability for long pieces of text. On the spine of the cover, Futura is used to give readability to the title and author.