The impact of mass incarceration on women
A beautifully designed print and digital report engages readers and honors the stories of women and families around the country.
Is mass incarceration the largest barrier to gender justice today? Essie Justice Group, a nonprofit based in Oakland, CA, decided to find out.
The Essie team surveyed 2,700 women nationally and found that the incarceration of a loved one or family member results in the social, emotional and economic control of millions of women in the United States. However, the incarceration of a loved one also spurred many women to activism. Fifty-five percent of women reported that they were more civically engaged during their loved one’s incarceration than before.
Design Inspiration
With a clear understanding of their core audiences–women’s rights organizations and criminal justice reform advocates–elefint collected and organized inspiration into a digital moodboard that capture the feeling we intended for Essie’s report. The moodboard included the portrait photography of Juliana Kasumu and Deun Ivory as well as old covers of feminist magazine Ms. In the words of our client “It might be lost on many people, but modeling the cover of our report on Ms. Magazine… would be SO NERDY AND AMAZING.”
Behind every portrait
Elefint helped direct a photoshoot in Los Angeles. The resulting portraits capture the power and spirit of each woman women whose personal stories are interspersed throughout the report.
“I’m excited about what we’ve discovered around isolation because to me that’s really where the hope is. It points to a solution.”Gina ClaytonFounder and Executive Director
Printing matters
In order to deliver a polished and professional report worthy of any coffee table, we selected high quality 80# Kelly digital gloss paper for the cover and 80# Accent text for the interior pages, and printed on a HP Indigo 7000, which is a digital printer that uses cmyk wet ink like offset, but doesn’t require plates. Pretty cool if you ask us! We are always happy to coordinate all the fine details between our client and printer, and in this case, ensure a timely delivery of 1,000 reports that were distributed to activists, donors, and community partners across the country.
When print and digital merge
This project is just one example of how print and digital can work seamlessly together to pull people in to your cause. In addition to the print report, we created this brochure website to enable a wider network of criminal justice advocates to access the report online. We were thrilled to see the conversation continue online and commend Essie and their partners for undertaking such a hopeful study!