"Your Cell Phone is a Cruel Master" was intended to invoke thought within the viewer about the place of technology in this society.

People rely on their phones for everything from waking them up in the morning to helping them go to sleep. From arriving to work on time to finishing the work in a timely manner, cell phones are present to make the job easier. But what happens when people rely so much on their cell phones that they are no longer in control of their own lives?

This project was intended to illustrate that. Sarah Kidd wanted to illustrate this through a simple cartoon that would stick in the minds of her viewers. She created multiple thumbnail sketches to help her organize her thoughts.

This is an example of some of the thumbnails she drew. She experimented with the image of chains tying a hand to a cell phone, then with drawings of an "X," surrounded by text that gave the impression of a cell phone controlling someone's life.

Eventually, she decided on Thumbnail #10. It had a digital appearance that was simple, easy to remember, and gave the viewer a feeling of dread, that something was watching them and judging their every move. 

Sarah used an image of her own cell phone as a reference and traced it on Adobe Illustrator. She quickly realized that the red and white color scheme was too hard on the eyes and opted for pink and red instead. She used rectangular shapes, the pen tool, and text boxes to create the illustration.

Sarah's final challenge was the background. She wanted to create a background that would make it look as if the cell phone was sitting on a table, but she couldn't generate a background that fit the image well enough. She went to a professional graphic designer, Jim Burke, for advice, and he taught her how to create a wood-paneled background. She created the background and put her own touches on it, changing the color and using drop shadows to create texture.