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.

 

As the editorial unit begins I was presented with ten potential articles that I could create my three, double page spreads about. Although I read through many of the articles the two that jumped out most to me were Can A French Friar End The 21st-Century Slave Trade_ as well as In A Perpetual Present (1) 

While both texts were very interesting to read and analyse, As well as I was able to highlight and annotate large portions of the articles identifying the key parts of information, such as useful quotes and facts. I decided to go for “Can A French Friar End The 21st-Century Slave Trade”. I made this decision as the alternative article, although has much potential, was chosen by a large portion of the class and so I felt it would be more difficult to generate innovative and new ideas when the topic had so many brains already choosing that article. I also felt the article about modern slavery had much more potential, the fact that it is set mostly within places around the amazon, yet details areas around the entire globe, the concept itself, a crowd of millions of people working within “hidden slavery”, all of this alongside the fact that there will be expansive amounts of research that could be done to acquire further relevant information.

After some brainstorming seen above, me and others correlated our opinions on the article and what things we drew from reading and analysing it. I personally discovered the lack of mention of money within the article, as well as the expansive description of the Frenchman Xavier himself, because of this some of my initial thoughts include illustrating him as he is described within the article, this could then be paired with the quote “What occupies him is not the promise of a distant heaven but the use of Christianity to help the poor fight for better lives”. Or something similar, I feel the almost heroic type depiction of him met with the quote would help to translate the gravity of his actions, colour schemes could be very dark or, in particular for the first section, put within the colours of the French flag, however I will want to avoid causing potential bias. The second and third section of the article describe the problem and the countries involved with it. Some things I found particularly shocking about the article was the sheer number of people put into this form of “modern slavery”. One quote stood out among the rest of the article of me “The final country to outlaw it was Mauritania, in 1981″. I think it is important to translate the fact that slavery is still somewhat common today and has taken an entirely new form, it still exists, yet is much more hidden by countries narrowing the definition of slavery. Initial colour schemes that come to my head are Blacks, Reds, Sea blues/greens and Whites. Black paper may help to translate the seriousness of the topic while still keeping it aesthetically pleasing.

After a talk with David about our thoughts on the article and how to approach it, I have been told that cliches much be avoided at all costs. What will make this project a success for me will be smart and innovative use of visual metaphors, after taking this in I now know I must avoid uses of chains, shackles etc. this will come across as too much of a cliche and therefore force the reader to lose interest very quickly. Moving on from this day I will now work to expand my research and begin looking for ideas that will influence my initial sketches and designs, I will also have to begin looking at what potential grid systems I wish to experiment with.

As an introduction into our new, editorial based project. We were tasked to, once again get into groups and then create some rough sketches of layouts based on a chosen topic, the topic my group was given was titled, “Wallpaper, In or Out?”

After some deliberation as to whether or not we wanted to change the topic, we decided to stick to the Wallpaper title and began finding articles to create a layout around. My article was relatively short in text so i knew i would have to use large amounts of imagery in order to prevent my work from looking to empty. Due to the modern trend nature of the article i decided o create a very modern looking finish to my design, keeping it simple yet effective. I think i did this well, the large image showcasing Wallpaper alongside well placed body copy and headings. However our group lacked consistency throughout our 8 pages, using different fonts and varying pace throughout, others did not go for the modern approach as much and so the results looked too contrasting. However from this exercise i have learnt much about the editorial process and was able to look at some more successful outcomes from other groups, this task served as an interesting and valuable introduction into editorial design as well as a welcome re-introduction into the programme Adobe InDesign, I will be using InDesign a great deal more over the coming weeks so, using grid systems to create a piece of editorial design in roughly five wees time. If i were to do this exercise again I would correlate more closely with my group as well as experiment more with the grid system, rather than keep with the relatively simple 3 column grid and 12.7mm margins that our group used throughout the entirety of the workshop.