Idea Development: Hand Signs to Hand Shapes!

As part of my research I decided to look at sign language as way of communicating messages, for my earlier research I had taken photographs of a friend performing the alphabet in Makaton, a simplified version of BSL (British Sign Language). I've been really interested in this idea because I think it has a lot of possibilities,  I wanted to create a new visual language based on Makaton, this way it was addressing both sides of the messages theme, the communication and the interpretation. To start developing the hand signs into brand new shapes I layered some basic Photoshop shapes on top of the photos, in order to see where the anchor points of the shapes where and to help understand the structure better. This has helped me because I now know the basic outlay of the sign, so I can re-work that into a shape whilst the image still keeps it's original intentions. 

The original photograph

The photo with anchor points

Idea development

This is another one of the thumbnail sketches I'm developing, I've tried taking it further than collage by manipulating it on collage. I'm not 100% sure about the outcome, it seems to having something lacking from the composition, perhaps the lack of texture or depth is what's making the image flat? Either way I'll not include these in my final response it's not what I expected from developing it, although it does summarise the idea of warped context and the rude slogan can be traced back to Barbara Kruger Influence! 

The original composition, with cleaned up text and colour.

Two-tone

Re-arranged

The original drawing was on brown paper with black fine liner, then scanned and imported into Photoshop, I liked the colour of the paper in contrast to the black so decided to keep it that colour but edit out some of the imperfections, however it seemed to look too flat as an image, I tried to upload some hand drawn type that I'd done in stick and ink but this didn't seem to break it up either, so I decided that it would be best to stop developing this idea and move on to another.

Design Ideas

 Over the last few weeks I've decided to focus on body language and it's relationship to how we interpret messages, I'd drawn some thumbnails of possible ideas that I could develop into final outcomes and then chose the 5 that I preferred most.

I then created further images from the selected thumbnails, mostly in collage, however I really like the look of the stitch outcome, the combination of the bold stick and mixed grounds work well with the composition. Also, I find the gold digger collage quite interesting, I'd selected an image from a magazine of what I thought a gold digger would look like, blew it up to a3 photocopy, then oiled the image in printmaking, this made the whole sheet transparent whilst making the image a lot darker, this in itself turned out quite nicely, but it also provided a nice background to work type on top of. The idea of the gold digger sign being that it's using "caution" as formal and authoritative language, but in a non formal context, this warps the context of the entire image, changing the whole interpretation of the language! 

Research

Following the stitching experiment I'd done with body language I decided to take a look at other designers that worked stitch and embroidery as I think it's a very interesting process that produces really nice results, especially when used with collage!


Marico Maricar!

I like how this designer has used the stitch on type, it gives the image better texture as well as a raised appearance, it works nicely with the delicacy of the typeface.

Noemi Manalang!
I'd found this designer on behance.net portfolio designer and found his use of collage stitch and drawn image both relevant and similar in style, the image itself is quite loose and reflects the drawing style.

Collage and Body Language!

I've been looking at ways to experiment with images and tried stitching the sewing machines. I used photographs I'd taken which focus on people's facial expressions, so I thought stitch would be a really interesting way to explore those shapes. I blew the photographs up to A3 on the photocopier, then layered a variety of grounds on the back to give it a more interesting look. I stitched over the lines on the photograph so that the white thread would create the shape on the other side. I did this intentionally to the black paper image, however when I did it to the brown paper image, I meant to use black thread, but the light thread actually looked quite interesting, as more focus was put on the puncture holes from the needle, which created a new shape in itself.

Once completed I cut out some type then added it to the first image, I'm quite happy with how it turned out as it seemed to compliment the image quite nicely, the composition was very well balanced as well. I used "you what?!" for the type as it seemed to voice the emotions evident on the character's face.