Gender and Crime tribute

This is a tribute to
Kimberly Glider's cover design for Gender and Crime,
a book (soon to be?) published by NYU Press.

I really do hope Kimberly doesn't mind me giving this a try. (Naturally, my design's being a tribute to her work means that this image here will never be used for commercial purposes. This, on my part, is really just an exercise.)

To tell the truth, it was Ian Shimkoviak's tribute to Kimberly's work that led me, in turn, to her original design, and it was Ian's daring that inspired my bravery and curiosity. Thank you, Kimberly, and thank you, Ian.

As for the design here: While Kimberly emphasized and implied a subtle female shape with the handcuffs and Ian approached the same concept in a more direct, obviously masculine way, I thought the handcuffs could also be used in a perhaps more gender-neutral take - thus trying to approach the gender-neutrality of the title - within an oppressive "blackspace" frame and with a similarly gloomy type treatment.

The photo I have used and manipulated here was (afaik) originally published and is owned by raezer (a flickr user) under a Creative Commons license. Thank you, raezer.

I really do hope you like this, and am looking forward to any constructive feedback.

-

PS: Should I submit this into the fanart section? No, I guess not.

Update: While I was working on this, Ian came up with the very same idea, and we, obviously unaware of this matching, uploaded and updated our works simultaneously. Please note that when I started out w/ this concept, Ian's blog post featured only one design, the one with the "kiss" (and, obviously, none with the dual symbol concept.) Some ideas really just pop up in many heads, and at the very same time.