With my work now submitted onto the teaching Mac within University I now have a small amount of time to reflect on the project as a whole and analyse what went well or did not go well, what I have learned, how I found the project and what I would like to do to further enhance my work.

What Went Well?

I think my favourite part of this project was very much the earlier stages, I enjoyed being given the opportunity to explore  plethora of creative techniques and options, I found other peoples advice very helpful in giving my potential solutions to the problems that I encountered, as well as giving me additional ideas to begin sketching and experimenting with. I found my initial ideas were extremely varied offering a large amount of optional paths to go down and enhance the ideas of each strand of ideas. I thought that I responded to feedback well within my blog and continued to react and improve my work with each available opportunity, I attended all of the optional sign up workshops allowing me access to many new skills that can now be used for future projects once the processes have been written up about, I particularly enjoyed the bookbinding workshop as it was a welcome change from my standard, digital based work where almost all of my time is spent. Finally I think the creation of my own typeface worked effectively, it did take a considerable amount of time to create and refine however the quality of the finish seems worth the time I spent making the typeface and I’m happy with the amount of space it takes up within my final three double page spreads.

What Did I Find Difficult/Did Not Go Well?

Some things within this project that I felt did not go very well or that I found hard to move past include; I seemed to be able to effectively create initial ideas for many different concepts however, I found it very difficult to really enhance any other ideas apart from those that included the neon and ripped paper finish. I am somewhat lucky that this proved to be such an effective idea, it would have taken me much longer and I may not have gotten my final spreads to such a refined state that I think they are in now if I was forced to go over the text more, pull out and refine even more ideas. I really struggled attempting to get a shadow manipulation photograph and in the end, had to abandon the idea completely and leave it simply as a previous attempted draft. I really did hope that I would be able to capture such an image, I think the detail would have made a perfect opening spread image, if I could then make that spread consistent with the other two I feel it would have made my work much stronger overall.

What Have I learned From This Project?

I have learnt many new skills and found much new knowledge throughout the five week duration of this project. Firstly I have widened my knowledge on typefaces by creating my own, I have learned almost all I know about Indesign throughout the last five weeks by designing my spreads using it with a combination of Photoshop and Illustrator, of which both of these programmes I feel my knowledge has expanded massively. I now feel I have much more techniques and processes at my disposal ready for use in many future projects that are still to come. As I attended all of the optional sign up workshops I was able to not only enhance my skills in Indesign and Screen printing but was also able to learn a completely new skill of bookbinding which although I did not use that skill elsewhere within this project, I already have plans to use it in some of my pastime projects on the side away from University.

What Would I Change?

Finally some things I would change/improve if I were to go back and do this project over again include; Further research into designed articles in general in the hope that it would give me some more creative ideas to then work into my own designed article as well as attempting more photography, I feel it would be quite easy to acquire a large amount of work through the medium of photography and so I think that in further projects I will use this medium to a much larger extent than I have within this editorial project.

 

After taking in all of the previous advice given to me through group and one to one tutorials and critiques I believe I have now created what is my final three double page spreads, ensuring to utilise effective hierarchy while maintaining easily legible body copy, headings and pull out quotes, as well as containing enough difference in appear so that the spreads are interesting to observe and read but similar enough so that each page appears obviously all from the same article I feel I have done this successfully, the use of my own self generated neon typeface stands out so much to the point where simply having that appear on every page be enough to tie all of the spreads together, this allowed me to play and experiment much more with what I could potentially do/get away with. For example; the rapid changing in amount of body copy and colour helps to keep each spread more interesting and prevents the overall look from becoming boring and  lacking creativity. I feel my strongest spread in terms of creativity and visual metaphor is the second page on the second spread, the use of the randomly jumbled letters that almost show full messages that are not quite noticed at first alongside the additional text within the heading literally makes the viewer “read between the lines” very carefully, I find this to be my favourite due to not only the Cleverness of the idea but the execution is done to a neat and high quality standard, the text shines brightly to attract attention and the background used (a photograph of a pin board darkened and slightly de-saturated) is dark enough so that it translates a mysterious and gloomy atmosphere, but still present enough so that it can be used to help the neon glow blend in more effectively and realistically.

I’ve found the colours used for each of the spreads to be vibrant when needed and attention grabbing, I really like the sharp contrast which help to bring out the glows from the brine signs more effectively. As well as contrast with the light gray paper, however I think the paper effect may work more effectively in my second spread if the crinkles are lessened or even removed so that the foreground becomes a more constant shade or a brighter white, but I would then lose the illusion of it being a piece of paper, perhaps more experimentation is needed for this section.

In terms of the typography, I feel the line length is suitable for the point size, this has been tested by previously printing the pages and seeing if the body copy is still easily legible, I would like to include more specialist features within particularly the body copy, balding text and italics etc. I think the now much larger titles work more effectively especially those that spill onto multiple pages. I feel doing this gives the work a greater sense of play as well as pulling more focus to the titles themselves giving me more control over the hierarchy. The amount of body copy feels very appropriate, certain pages do contain much more in a condensed space however I think I have handled that very well, the splitting of each section onto one spread alongside the changing of colour really works to split the article into sections. Finally the pull out quotes are used to try to appear as though they are selling the information that appears within, stating that the beatings slaves endure are open for sale as well as the second spread appearing to “advertise” the amount of slaves that are estimated around the world. The feeling of irony when these obscene things are presented as advertisements are shocking to the reader as well as the fact that they are placed using much larger and heavier fonts ensure that they are brought up within the hierarchy scale. The neon borders also help to exacerbate this factor. Although I have used more than two fonts I feel the neon typeface fits more into the part of the background and so the body copy and sub headings being different fonts doesn’t hurt the quality of the typography. I think the neon type looks much better when it is used with a much thicker line size, the thicker letter forms are much nicer to look at and give off more of a glow.

 

I decided to present these three double page spreads as one single article to a tutor for critique. Some things that I noticed even before my critique was the fact that there a very strong sense of consistency and pace between spreads two and three, however almost no consistency between those two and spread one, my initial plans to have a manipulated shadow image be the background for the first spread have not been completed yet, this is due to the unforeseen difficulty in this task, I feel I may be unable to perform this in a high enough quality before the deadline and so will have to look at either alternative methods to creating this type of finish, or making a different design entirely. An advantage to doing this would be that I would be able to make something that held much more consistent aesthetic and pace to the other two spreads. For now, as a way to visualise the concept I have simply roughly replicated the effect using photography and Photoshop in order to attempt to show what I want the end effect to look like, however this does not look as good as I want it too.

Many things were offered for improvement within the critique, alternative research methods as well as opinions on my designs themselves. Something that I noticed was a common theme throughout all of my critiques was the dislike of the brick background that I have used within some of my designs, although I personally do like the effect that it offers, I am willingly to try alternatives. Perhaps the inky darkness of a plain black background will assist to give my work a greater sense of mystery, a finish I feel would work very effectively given my chosen article.

An idea that was brought up that I would like to explore further into was the concept of windows as a visual metaphor for my article, I like this concept because not only do I agree with the idea but I also feel that I would be able to easily acquire a large amount of work that could be used as potential final outcome imagery. It would also give me an opportunity to step away from type-as-image for a while and explore alternative design ideas. Windows could act as a barrier, however one that could be seen through but not moved through, this combined with the use of curtains/blinds to obscure the imagery and typography placed within the page would not only give my work a more three dimensional aspect to it, but would also give me more potential avenues to explore in terms of visual metaphors for my article.

After bringing up that use of lights to reveal identifiable, but obscured at first shapes within the shadows that are produced some extra research points include, reverse graphics, where stained surfaces are cleaned in such a way that they reveal or create artworks within them. While this would be a very aesthetically pleasing concept to create, I feel it would be very difficult to practice, this as well as the fact that Illustrating is not my strongest way of creating work. However it would be interesting to try.

The use of neon signs was looked at, and although the overall look of the typeface was positive, the connotations that are linked in with the locations that neon signs are normally located were pointed out, however I feel this is only true when the neon type is paired with the brick wall background, so this only gives me further reason and motivation to try out different alternatives for background textures, although I would very much like to have a plain black background, the neon glows work very effectively when they have something to blend into, it gives the light a much more realistic look, making it look more consistent alongside photography while still being able to be used alongside illustration and typography.

Overall I found this feedback somewhat conflicting with previous feedback, however it was still useful in bringing up new concepts to explore as well as confirming certain thoughts about my designs that I had been pondering for a number of days, moving on from this feedback I will redesign the backgrounds for all the of spreads and see what effective outcomes I can come up with, I will most likely stick with the neon type however I plan to change the scenery surrounding the type in order to make it more effective, due to the large amount of time that I have put into creating my own inspired typeface I feel it would be a massive waste to not use it within my initial final outcomes.

I will begin sketching and photographing potential new backgrounds in the form of windows acting as barriers, thinking up new ways to obscure text to convey visual metaphors using this method. As well as looking into more easily achieved methods of capturing my initial spread photograph, this will most likely be by simply taking a photograph without a shadow and manipulating it to a very convincing finish within Photoshop, this also allows me to edit other parts of the photograph in order to make it more aesthetically pleasing.

Finally I plan to explore much further with the ripped paper effect, due to the positive feedback on the page that featured this concept I will create some initial designs that show the ripped fragments of paper possibly obscuring text similarly to the way I want the blinds of windows too, making it more obvious that the text is trying to hide from view and requires something or someone to rip off the covers to reveal this hidden truth that so many are unaware of.

I am very glad for this feedback, it has offered me alternate views on my designs and will help me to explore further ideas in the coming weeks, I plan to now return to my sketchbook to brainstorm some more ideas that can be illustrated and photographed further to be used in my final outcomes.

The majority of my feedback from the last critique was to do with the backgrounds that I had used as well as the first spread lacking imagery consistency. However many of the positive reflections that I received was about the text being obscured by the background, I decided to, with this in mind, to recreate one of my spreads to use the ripped paper effect more, however for this spread I used it to hide the text to a more extreme angle, at some points the paper literally blocks over and separates the different paragraphs. I was very careful to ensure that the legibility was still clear. In terms of hierarchy I presented the spread to many different people in order to gauge how successful it is, although the majority of the answers were very different, they all gave answers that resulted in the information being read in the correct order. What I like most about this spread is not the body copy itself, but the much larger words that surround the paragraphs like borders, as it would less like a natural tear if they were all perfectly square closely surrounding the text the large words help to create a sort of half border that runs under the paper, but not too much so that the words become immediately illegible. The weakest point of the piece I would say is the Pull out quote, I find it lacks creativity, by simply using the font that I used for the body copy but larger as well as the fact that it disobeys the grid layout. A way to improve the pull out quote could be by changing the font although this would potentially disrupt an efficient flow of consistency throughout the remaining two double page A3 spreads. A secondary way of improving the pull out quote could potentially be by correcting the placement of the paper tear in he background so that the quote sits more comfortably within the three column grid. A final method of improving the creative style within the quote would be to re select the quote and choose a shorter quote so that the point size could be larger, or a border could be incorporated.

This spread and the effects incorporated within were created using Adobe Photoshop, tools used include; brush tool, pen tool, paint bucket and move tool. Moving on from this, I would like to now experiment with how the neon type and neon effect will interact with my new, less textured background. Initial concerns are; the potential lack of blending between the neon glow and the now non textured background, this id due to the fact that the blending modes in Photoshop will now no longer affect the intensity of the glow surrounding the letter forms. I would now like to experiment further with the paper tear effect, trying out different placements to see what effect it has on the overall atmosphere, hierarchy and legibility of the double page spread.

 

Spread 1

 

For the first of my three spreads I thought it would be a strong idea to include my strongest potential image, using the photograph as a background for both of the A3 pages I thought would make it more striking to look at upon first glance. I attempted to create shapes that could be slightly recognised as different objects within the shadows of the object, although at this time I have not managed to acquire the desired photo and so for the time being I have created a prototype using Photoshop as well as a self generated image of a face in shadow using Adobe Illustrator. The colours and shades of the photo look nice, I have edited the purple shades of the bottle to try to make it blend into the other two spreads more. However I still feel the consistency is not strong enough while this remains one of the double page spreads. I feel this was meant to contain my strongest imagery however at the minute this appears to be my weakest of the three and appears to be somewhat of a detriment to the other two spreads. Some ways that I could improve this would be to darken the edges of the photograph or even to invert the image so that there would be a dark background meaning I could potentially use the neon font as the light would have something to blend into, this would assist in tying together the three spreads, however I feel I would struggle to get the shadow to show in much detail once the colours were removed or the photograph itself was darkened. I may have to redo this spread to make it stronger in the future, or alternatively choose a less difficult method of photography to capture the manipulated shadow photograph.

As for the typography I attempted to keep it consistent with the body copy and sub headings, in particular on my final spread the body copy appears in small amounts and moves vastly across the page, due to the fact that I have too much body copy within this one page I could not do this however I have attempted to replicate this with the placement of different sub headings and the introduction paragraph appearing on the right hand side page, I feel this will help to disrupt the hierarchy and throw the reader across the pages multiple times while still reading the text in the order that I desire.

I think the typography is more successful than the imagery however the concept for the photography is much more ambitious and so i’m more looking forward to what the outcome will look like once that is taken, even if it still does not correlate well enough with the remaining two spreads.

Spread 2

 

For my second spread I have used made it much more consistent with the third spread by using a large amount of the the brick background as well as my self generated neon typeface, I like this layout much more than my first spread, the text looks more like it belongs where it has been placed as well as the imagery being much stronger, although the background looks slightly plain it does give the neon glow something to effectively bounce off due to the sharp contrast between the two layers, I feel a dark background helps to convey a feeling of dread a mystery as well but I think this feeling could be enhanced if the background had a less obvious texture than a simply and outstanding brick wall, even if it does also help the neon font and glow to appear more realistic. I feel the imagery on the left is strong enough to warrant it taking up the entire A3 page due to the strong hidden messages that it portrays, it not only introduces the reader into the new type being used but the hidden “In The Open” line that is not noticed at first helps to represent the new type of slavery that has crept into existence, by making it look like a neon sign that has perhaps been turned off I hope it effectively  represents the voices of those within the silent mass of slaves who’s voices are muted and go on living without those who can assist noticing the dire situation that they are forced to endure. 

The cries for help assist in making the turned off neon sign effect more concrete, however I don’t personally like the effect being used more than once or twice, I feel that one single use is enough to translate it’s meaning and so too many uses make it obvious that it it simply there to fill up the remaining space on the page, this is where having a less textured background could be useful, rather than having a somewhat bland brick wall taking up half of an A3 page, an eerie, inky black background slightly shaded over with a low opacity  cloud effect could translate a more mysterious atmosphere and would hopefully not appear as simply boring and bland negative space, the empty spaces themselves would serve a purpose to slightly set the reader on edge by staring into nothing over staring at the relative safety of a close up brick wall.

The second page introduces the next section of the article, titled “The Bondage Industry”. Also utilises the neon text and effects but also introduces many new aspects while slightly changing the layout of the body copy all in an effort to keep the article interesting to look at and read while at the same time, not changing it too much so that large portions of consistency are lost and the separate spreads no longer look like they belong to the same article. In terms of imagery the same heading and background style are employed however a new ripped paper effect is added to help attempt to distort and even hide the text behind so that it assists in translating the feeling of the “hidden” aspect of this new, more modern kind of slavery, having the text attempting to hide itself from view behind the two paper “curtains” that are behind peeled back forcing the majority of the heading and body copy to be revealed alongside the ugly truth that the text states. Overall i think this spread is more effective than the first however I still feel my final spread is more effective and more interesting to look at, some improvements that could be made to this spread include doing something more interesting for the bottom half o the first page rather than repeating an already used effect, or I could potentially extend the writing so that it fills the page. I would like to do something more creative and consistently themed for the pull out quote on the right hand page, further experimentation and sketching is needed to refine and perfect my middle spread.

Spread 3

I find when looking at my final spread that it is my favourite of the three, still using a large amount of the neon effect, however it is used in new ways, rather than simply to write text the illuminated world map helps to give it a new, fresher and more interesting look. The heavily contrasting background helps to grab the viewers attention to certain areas as well as move the reader through the page in the correct way. I would like the heading to be much larger so that it stretches across both of the pages, making the spread appear more as one large image rather than two individual items on a double page spread. The body copy is once again quiet sporadically placed, placing the paragraphs beside the countries that each paragraph is talking about, the text within the centre than reads WherE!? I have attempted to translate the fact that slavery is everywhere in the hope that the reader reads the text firstly as Where? then reading HERE!, as if they are asking where is slavery? it is here! Where the reader is reading, it would be where every reader since since the article states multiple times that slavery is present in some form everywhere in the world, and certainly everywhere this article would be shown in volume.

Although this is my favourite spread of the three, I still feel it could be improved massively with relative ease. By once again removing the brick background, as well as possibly changing the colour of the neon effect to help to differentiate it from the previous spread a bit more, making the heading larger would make the spread as a whole double page more interesting to look at. I also think the pages could be made better if i including one or two pull out quotes, this would be most effective if the pull out quote incorporated the neon effect somehow. Finally I would like to fill some of the empty spaces with small amounts of additional body copy as I think it would work to achieve a better sense of hierarchy by including things such as sub headings and pull out quotes, although overall I am already quiet happy with how this particular spread turned out.

Following on from a point made in my previous work critique, I have decided to delve further into the neon type format. After a long search at the different kind of “Classical” neon type available, I did not find one that looked similar to what I have envisioned in my head. Because of this I have decided to create my own neon typeface, made using Adobe Illustrator and being inspired by the previous typefaces I have looked at and analysed.

To start this process I first began by sketching out some initial ideas of what flicks and flairs I wanted certain letter forms to posses, In order to set my typeface apart from regular sans serif fonts it would need to be obvious that it was meant to represent the text often found on old neon signs. I thought that the answer to this would be to include some loops on the letter forms similar to those seen in the top left example given above, these help give each letter form a more “neon style” finish. Once my sketching was done I then moved on to creating the finalised versioned digitally on Adobe Illustrator.

I decided to use Adobe Illustrator rather than Photoshop due to the ability to create lines and shapes in a vector format, I was unsure of what size these letter forms would need to be in once I placed them into my article itself so the ability to resize them without any loss of quality was vital. The creation of the letter forms was relatively simple and went mostly without problems or setbacks, with the large amount of inspiration I had collected I found combining different ideas easy and using the pen tool to create a smooth curves of the letter forms happened quite quickly. While creating the letter forms it did occur to me that certain letters are symmetrical and I could simply create one side of the letter form then duplicate and reflect it to make it perfectly symmetrical, however I decided against doing this. I did this due to the fact that I am almost certain that this typeface will not be used for body copy and I, currently, only have plans to use this effect for large, sign type titles where every small detail of each and every letter form will be easily visible, I think that having some small imperfections on some of the letter forms would help to make my titles appear more personalised and therefore, look more convincingly like a classical, hand made neon sign. Examples of these small imperfections can be found in places like, the slightly asymmetric curve atop the O as well as the curves on C’s and S’s, although this is only a very small design choice and it did extend my design time considerably, I think that because I plan this font to play such a key role within my article that I think it is worth spending the extra time to get every detail how I want it to look like.

Inputting My Typeface Into A Design

My first attempt at inserting the typeface into a design is the outcome seen above, as well as using the self generated typeface I also included the neon effect seen in my previous design, although this typeface is much lighter and thinner, I find the effect to work more effectively at appearing as a realistic neon sign using this typeface. The brick texture in the background helps the glows within the background blend more realistically. A complication that occurred which I did not foresee was the fact that I would have to manually assemble the generated letter forms within Illustrator, this took quite a considerable amount of time because of the inconsistencies within the kerning and Leading, however I found that these also did not have to be perfect, rather than using rulers and grid lines to ensure that each letter form was pixel perfect distance apart I simply used my eyes to get a rough but still very accurate finish. The barely noticeable difference also help to translate a feeling of hand made, classic design. Although this did have to be much less noticeable than the previous asymmetricality within the letter forms themselves due to the fact that wildly inconsistent kerning can be extremely distracting and heavily detrimental to the overall design. That being said I still feel I have done a high quality job and I am very pleased with the overall result, although I have previously made a typeface I still feel I am completely new to the aspect, lacking much experience of any vital rules that may exist within the creation process. However if I were to create another typeface I would spend much longer not looking for inspirational letter forms, but instead spend a considerable amount of time researching other people’s creation methods in order to possibly solve my problem of imperfect kerning and leading, as well as hopefully acquiring some useful tips along the way in an effort to speed up the process of creating the letter forms themselves.

I think this effect would benefit from being used in further designs and more experimentation with point size and placement to see where it can be used most effectively, I also plan to experiment with the different colours that could be used with the neon effect. However for everything i have used it for so far i am very pleased with the result and feel it does in fact correctly correlate a much more classic look than the previous neon type effect that i created earlier on in the project, this experimentation was well worth the large amount of time it takes to create messages for.

After presenting my ideas to a group as well as David some feedback I received included; avoiding illustrating Plassat himself as that would be far too literal and cliche, the wire cutter art is a good idea however I have much stronger concepts that I have presented. The HIDDEN concept is strong however as I thought the wording is far too literal however the concept is strong, as I also like the concept it is likely that I will delve further into the concept of “Hidden People”. Finally the neon sign concept is strong however it is recommended that I look further into it and consider combining it with another, alongside a recommendation to look into a more classical neon typeface.

After receiving these recommendations I am glad that illustrating Plassat was ruled out due to the fact that I feel I may lack some of the Illustrative abillites to be able to draw a portrait high enough quality to take a place on the very first page of the article. Due to the majority of the recommendations being to do with my typographic work I plan to explore type as image much further and look into new ways that the neon type could be used. I am going to do this because, although I do like the style of the neon effect I will need to delve further into the article if I am to find three double page spreads worth of metaphors that the effect would be relevant to as well as keeping the consistent enough to look like they all belong to the same piece of text. Overall I am very contempt with my feedback, the ideas I was most confident and happy with have been praised and pushed even further so I am excited with what the work I will continue to produce with the remaining weeks I have left for this project.

My next step is to look into different neon typefaces and either choose one, or potentially, create my own, giving my work a unique twist as well as exploring a new aspect of graphic design that I have not had any previous experience in.

In an effort to enhance my ability to access visual metaphor creation a workshop was organised where we would essentially go through the much larger five week task in less detail over the course of a couple of hours. In small groups we were all given an article and then told to deconstruct that article followed by thinking up and creating visual metaphor in the form of imagery with the knowledge gained from deconstructing that particular article. Initially i thought this workshop would not go well for me as it took me a considerable amount of time to deconstruct my own editorial article.

I am unsure whether it was the change in the article or the combination of my group members but we managed to quickly come up with very effective visual metaphors for our given article. I was surprised at the rate we discovered new ideas, I found that each group member contributed equally to this phase in the workshop and think that we worked extremely efficiently and effectively as a small team of only three members.

After this we then moved onto creating the imagery that would relate to the article, once again my group quickly came up with roughly five effective uses of visual metaphor that related to the article. I thought these outcomes were very effective while avoiding being too literal, especially for the small amount of time that we were given to complete this task.

Finally we would take one idea and sketch out imagery for what that might look like, my group chose the visual imagery “A wax strip pulling off parts of a landscape”. We thought this was the most effective visual metaphor due to the fact that it most directly shows the effect of single use hair removal products on the environment, as well as leaving more potential for further imagery with more development of the concept.

(SKETCH)

 

Overall I felt this workshop was overwhelmingly positive, many other groups seemed to also produce equally as successful outcomes in the short time that we were given, this workshop gave me additional knowledge as to how to deconstruct a given article quickly, yielding effective visual metaphors, I feel as though doing something similar to this once again soon would only make me faster and more effective at extracting effective visual metaphors from articles, overall improving my own editorial work.

Following on from my initial reflections and deciding on focusing on the article concerned with the issue of modern slavery, I began to deconstruct the article as far as I could to pull out useful and unique visual metaphors that would engage the reader while still remaining to look aesthetically pleasing.

Initially I thought about the aspect of the infinity symbol, I thought i could link this into the article effectively by using it to represent the endless loop that slaves take especially in less developed countries, they lack education and money and so are desperate for jobs, they are then led into low paying jobs or taken away with the promise of a successful future, this turns out to be false and so they are indoctrinated into the slave trade and therefore, hidden from public view and forced to work for little to no money in horrific conditions. I feel the infinity symbol would represent this effectively, however I quickly realised that I was unable to find many effective metaphors that were not literally using the symbol itself, I felt using the symbol itself would become too literal and would risk myself reducing the illustrations to simply illustrating the text that was present on the spreads. This led to re look at the article and find other meanings and messages that were within.

Themes that I found were present throughout the entirety of the duration of the article was that those who are in slavery are being led there by others as well as the fact that they seemed less educated and tend to be led with the promise of employment. Something I noticed was absent from almost all the article was the mention of money, there is no reference to the monetary side of slavery, the article entirely focuses on this “mass of hidden people” that number being between 20-38 million individuals. I liked this theme of “hidden people”, this could lead to a plethora of potential within creating effective and imaginative visual metaphor. Initial thoughts involve trying to hide certain parts of the text from the viewer, once this concept was thought up i produced this sketch.

Although the word used is very literal, since this was just an initial sketch I felt it was more important to simply display the concept than spend time on wordplay, the sheer size of the text means that I can easily afford to overlap areas and not affect the legibility of the text, as well as being able to gradient the colour into the black background. I very much like this concept, the clean finish and well orientated text will help to translate a high grade understanding of hierarchy, body copy, pull out quotes and sub headings could easily be used to enhance the hierarchy, paragraphs could be slotted between the letter forms in red or even overlapping to disrupt the hierarchy if needed. However this design is quite simple and so any errors would be spotted easily as well as the fact that it may not translate the metaphor as effectively as something more complex would, however it does effectively invoke contemplation as to the purpose of the effect used. I will have to experiment further with this style in order to determine the peak effectiveness of this style however, at the moment I am excited for the prospects that this concept could potentially yield.

Something I noticed quite quickly was that the text was split into three separate sections, and that the first section focused heavily on Xavier Plassat, previous concepts were to simply illustrate the man that was described, I decided to delve further into this in order to find a less literal response to the first section of the article. I feel that this section would be the most important section due to the fact that it would become the first double page spread, and so what the reader would see when they first began to read my designed article, powerful, emotional imagery is vital here, and effective visual metaphor the same.

My first concept was to focus on the heading of the first section “Captivity”, I then thought how the text would look if i placed a heavy, dark brick border around the outside so that the body copy and heading would appear captive within the page itself. While I do like this concept I do not feel as though I could create a strong enough consistency within the three different double page spreads, as well as the fact that the border means I have very minimal room for text, and so at times the pages would look too filled and therefore hurt both the legibility as well as the overall quality of the finish.

My ideas then moved to making Plassat into a metaphor himself, some of my favourite concepts were having this large pair of wire cutter/a sledgehammer coloured within the French flag colour scheme, cutting/breaking down a chain link fence/wall, using the hammer to represent Plassat and the wall to represent either slavery or the wall that hides those who have been led into slavery. I liked the initial concepts of this idea, although I think it will require significant illustrative talent in order to create the imagery in an interesting, aesthetically pleasing finish. This will take a large amount of time alongside many sketches and digital outcomes to perfect, I would like to pass this idea up with a lecturer before beginning this process as I want to ensure that it does not appear too cliche or literal.

The first two sketches begin to illustrate my ideas.

For the other sections of the article I began to focus more so on the creation of modern slavery as an industry more than some forgotten event of the past, to do this I would need to modernise the readers thoughts on slavery. Initial concepts that came to fruition included; using neon signs, lights and tubing to assist in changing the readers stance on has slavery been abolished long ago. By using this neon signs concept and taking it further I decided to experiment with the different ways I could achieve this style of finish, initially I thought the sole way to capture a neon light style would be photographing the signs themselves, however, after some experimentation i found an effective process that yielded a realistic looking “Neon Text Effect”. Next was to figure out how I could incorporate this effect into an effective and engaging visual metaphor for modern slavery, i then began to create the classical neon “For Sale” signs, however it would be used in such as way that what was being sold was human beings. An example can be found below.

Although this example uses photography that was simply easy to capture at the moment, the final idea would use much more refined photography that portrayed the idea to a stronger degree, I do like the finish that the neon type gives off, however I feel as though this metaphor could not be taken much further and so I would be unable to create three entire double page spreads with a strong enough consistency. Although personally I feel there is more potential in the neon sign effect, however I think I would need to chance and enhance the metaphors that I wish to convey.