For this exercise, I collected many examples of visual metaphors which I collated in a Pinterest board here.
I really enjoyed researching this. Some of the things I found were absolutely inspiring and completely genius satire and usage of metaphors. I particularly like Pawel Kuczynski, Davide Bonazzi and Sarah Wilkins on political satire, climate change, face book and mindfulness.
I was then asked to pick from a selection of concepts and create a drawn visual list of objects and subjects that could be used to symbolise them.
Before I chose, I explored a few of them in some spider diagrams to see where I could come up with some interesting ideas. I explored ‘High achievement’, ‘censorship of the press’ and ‘dreams of romance’.
I much preferred the idea of looking at ‘high achievement’ so I stuck to that and started drawing things from my list and other things as they came to me in the process.
I started with the classic things that I think would resonate most with most people: graduating, making money, climbing the ‘ladder’, living in a penthouse, podiums and medals, flashy cars, big diamond rings, getting voted for…many things that for me personally don’t necessarily signify success.
I then tried to think bigger in terms of history or science – rocket to the moon, climbing the highest mountain, reaching 100 years of age, having a happy family and a big house and getting married or becoming a CEO.
Final reflections:
All of these images resonated well with the family and friends I showed them too. They didn’t necessarily go straight to high achievement but started with words like – winning, happiness, success, money, high flyer so I think this was a good likeness.
What threw them off was when I started putting things in that were more relevant to myself and to my work e.g. achieving the goal for climate change, achieving gender equality, selling a painting for lots of money, writing a book, directing a film. I think we are preconceived to see high achievement more in monetary and family terms and less from an artistic point of view. Something to remember if I ever get a brief like this and depending on who the audience is!
References:
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