»Mummy, do babies really come from the freezer?«

Book Design

In Octo­ber 2014, the corpo­ra­ti­ons Apple and Face­book announ­ced that they would pay for their employees to freeze their egg cells. The free­zing of egg cells for non-medi­cal reasons is called social egg free­zing. I was inte­rested in this announ­ce­ment because I can’t imagine delay­ing the desire of having child­ren just to climb the career ladder. Around the same time, our class began a book design with the subject confron­ta­tion. Social egg free­zing is the result of the confron­ta­tion between child­ren and career; between family and profes­sion. This confron­ta­tion is very violent because both things happen at the same stage in life. When it’s time to make career and to climb the social ladder, a woman reaches her maxi­mum of ferti­lity and has the best chance of giving birth to healthy child­ren.

When it comes to social egg free­zing, there is no longer a contest. The baby will be delayed and liter­ally put on ice. Howe­ver, many people forget that egg free­zing doesn’t guaran­tee that you will have child­ren at a later age. There is a big chance of remai­ning child­less. The coverage on this topic by the media is also inte­res­ting. Getting child­ren and star­ting a family are very private subjects; subjects that shouldn’t be discus­sed with the employer or in public. The sensi­tive deci­sion to start a family is confron­ted with ratio­na­lity and econo­mic effi­ci­ency.

I was there­fore inte­rested in addres­sing this issue with the same ratio­na­lity and scien­ti­fic approach. Working with the subject social egg free­zing has shown me that you can not only look at free­zing egg cells. There is so much more, inclu­ding test-tube ferti­li­sa­tion and other medi­cal possi­bi­li­ties. I tried to make my book down-to-earth and simply inform the reader about social egg free­zing. They should make up their mind on their own. I am confron­ting the reader in the same objec­tive way as the compa­nies are confron­ting their employees. To present the diffe­rent paths of life and the many possi­bi­li­ties within it, I have chosen the symbol of a map, like the maps of the metro and bus lines. The font I used is also used for the maps and time sche­du­les of the London Under­ground.

Braun­schweig Univer­sity of Art, Febru­ary 2015