Icon Development

Having completed and pasted up my final outcome for Symbol, I began re-working my ideas for Icon with the intention of pasting it up (due to the sizing issue with my last poster). When I was refining my ideas I settled on the X-Ray idea to represent my research involving the ingestion of safety pins. Previous crits have confirmed that this research is interesting enough to use, and I also conducted a photo-shoot using the X-Ray imagery for development which I thought was successful. I thought back to when I was producing collage at the start of the project, and how the combination of abstract shapes and gradients reminded me of organs within the body. I though that these two elements would work well together and produce some interesting collage. 

I tried and tested multiple ways of producing collage with this particular imagery involved. I began by using layers - the bottom one was a print out of the X-ray, then I cut out organ shapes using my own black and white photographs and assembled them on a sheet of acetate, layering this over the first layer. I then created a third layer, another sheet of acetate, with safety pins collages onto it. I made each layer of the on a separate sheet so that I could layer them up on the scanner, however, I had trouble with this as the layers never lined up correctly. The production also wasn't brilliant, the outcomes were very dark and too grainy. 

Due to the scanner not working to produce my collage, I decided to take each layer into Photoshop and assemble it digitally. This way, I could experiment with cropping and rotating really quickly, as well as inverting the images. It also was really useful to go through all the layer blend modes, this created so many different outcomes that I could then developing even further by cropping them down. I was really enjoying the outcomes that I made, I like how the element of the X-Ray is visible but it abstracted so that the focus remains on the pin/s. The abstract shapes (or 'organs') also don't read as organs, but add an element of abstract collage to the design that pushes it visually further and helps communicate the 'injected' theme.

Although I thought the outcomes were good, they didn't seem completely finalised. I considered going back to my X-Ray photo-shoot and cropping some down instead. However, before I could do so, I asked some friends for their feedback. Someone suggested that instead of using one collaged image of a bent safety pin, I should use one of my photographs from my first photo-shoot. These images still focused on abstracted safety pins, but they were a lot more minimal and refined. I took one of the best images and layered it up on top of the collage. I immediately saw an improvement in the design and was happier to call it finalised. I think that the design successfully communicates my ideas and research into the ingestion of safety pins, due to the subtle imagery and heavy shadow combination. A passer by complimented the design and pointed out immediately that 'it looks like an X-Ray' - job done.