I had already established an idea for my 'Index' poster based on my research - which was to visually communicate the darkly humorous irony of safety pin inventor Walter Hunt's death via pinprick. I thought that this idea was suitable for this poster because an index shows evidence of the object, a cause and connection situation. My aim was to convey the direct consequences of a safety pin, and I thought that the best way to show this visually was through the use of a plaster. I initially thought about using fake blood and trying to capture the idea more directly, however, plasters have more of an indirect connection to injury - especially something benign like a pin prick.
I tried taking some fabric plasters and manipulating them using the scanner, however, the results of this were disappointing. The imagery was not strong and lacked anything interesting. I knew that instead of simply using the plaster imagery I wanted to communicate more that linked back to my initial research like pain, death etc. and this was hard to do with the flat, static images being produced on the scanner. I decided to take some photos with the plasters as I would be able to direct and control this more easily. I wrapped one of my friends fingers in plasters (upon reflection I wish that I would have gone more over the top with this, either covering the whole hand in plasters or even bringing in "bloody" bandages, to add more drama to the photos) and got her to contort her hand in numerous different ways. I went for some more gentle, a falling hand to represent death, and some more strained, desperate, to convey pain.
Once I had my images I took them into Photoshop to edit them digitally. I wanted to push them further, but not overwork them because I thought that the images had a lot of meaning in them already. Any further work on them had to also be relevant to the idea. I experimented with the usual cropping and grain filter to see how some iterations would compare, and then had the idea of adding an over-all pattern. When I first began working on the Index poster and was working with plasters on the scanner, I noticed that when you zoom in on the fabric it reveals a pattern. Since the images had been zoomed in on and cropped so heavily, I tried out implementing this in the designs. I worked with the dot pattern in a lot of different ways however, I decided that I didn't like any of those outcomes. The pattern reads more as polka-dots and does not fit in with the theme of the poster or look contemporary, so I scrapped it.
Having gone back to my photos and trying to think of a new way to manipulate them, I thought about how I could re-visit my research and idea and use this further. I wanted to focus on how I could convey the pain and contortion felt when dying of an infected pinprick. I decided to layer up two of the photos, to make it look like the hands were being held out in shock, I then selected jagged sections and deleted or moved them in order to achieve a sharp collage effect that contrasted with the soft gradients. Along with the high contrast between light and dark, with the brightest bits being the plasters in order to draw the focus to them, I think that this process produced the most successful outcome.
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