On the front and back cover, I arranged a body of justified text into three columns against a brick-red background to resemble the exterior of a textile mill and foreshadow the story. Once turning to the inside pages and going “inside the mill” I designed the spread with thick top and bottom margins to confine the text into a horizontal space that feels restricting while mimicking the shape of a mill building.

An important aspect of this story is financial instability and concerns over money. This theme of scarcity connects with the mill, which I emphasized by styling the text each time finances are mentioned.

Regarding narration, I created a unique paragraph style to each character in the text to help demarcate the shift in perspectives as the narration transfers from family member to family member. I also typeset each character’s paragraph style to express their personality. Martha recounts the bulk of the story and has strong opinions so I styled her speech with all-caps type in bold. The story itself has a lot of voice with being set in rural North Carolina in the 20th century focusing on the lives of blue-collar workers. The southern colloquial speech used by the Belks is an essential piece to the story, so I highlighted their slang words with a bold red serif font.