The brief:
Reading existing signs symbols and images create a new symbol for one of these concepts:
Danger, Movement, Love, Here.
Research how existing visual language represents these concepts, document this through drawings, examples, mind maps. Then create an alternative symbol to represent at least one of the above concepts.
Movement:
I decided to pick ‘movement’ as I felt this might offer some different options to ‘danger’ and ‘love’ which have such typecast symbols. I started by looking at the definition of ‘movement’ and then brainstormed possible avenues off that. Movement has a very broad definition, it isn’t just the act of something moving, it can refer to political groups/stages and to military tactics.
I then thought it might be a good idea to research how other artists/designers have looked at movement in their work. I used the Tate’s website which categorizes work by theme’s and found movement was one of them. I saved images of work by a couple of artists as samples of what lots of other artists did to represent movement:
Movement seems to visual depicted by:
- geometric shapes arranged alongside each other in such a way as to give the allusion physically moving.
- lines, strokes that are curved or move across a page.
- the colour blue seems to be used quite a lot – perhaps as a link to the sea which is rarely still?
- fashion photo’s – models wearing clothes that flow freely in wind or give appearance of being moved.
- dancers/people physically walking running etc.
- colour – often highly contrasting colours or multiple colours can give something the feeling of moving.
- Political movement – the sign or placard is a symbol of protest?
From this I began to think about how I would re-represent movement, could I do it using existing images of movement?
I did a couple of very rough sketches of ideas. One using the word movement and symbols of things related to movement. But that seemed too much to be a cheats method? Then I thought about representing it through marks made by movement or related to and then having those things look like they were moving across the page by drawing them in a wiggled or curved line.
Then it occurred to me I could create something out of cut outs of things moving so i began to cut out images from magazines that I thought represented movement.