Study Task 4: Initial Ideas and Definitions

LINE | TEXTURE | SHAPE | COLOUR | COLLAGE

• How can themes be communicated through the 5 elements within the brief?
Looking at basic elements allows me to look at the basic components within my quote and the research I have collected so far. It allows me to be diagnostic in my approach, taking things apart to the core fundamentals, and enquire and investigate at a deeper level rather than just drawing political illustrations.

• What do these elements communicate visually and linguistically (our understanding of them as concepts)?
Components, collections, mark, path, continuous form,
outline, external boundary, pigment, light interpretation,
media, pattern, accidental, sensation, process, tone, surface.

• What do they mean as definitions?

• Line: A long, narrow mark or band.
• Shape: The external form, contours, or outline of someone or something.
• Colour: Pigmentation. The property possessed by an object of producing different sensations on the eye as a result of the way it reflects or emits light.
• Texture: The feel, appearance, or consistency of a surface or substance.
• Collage: A piece of art made by sticking various different materials such as photographs and pieces of paper or fabric on to a backing.

• What can they mean in relation to my overarching theme of Politics?

• Line: A divide, a scale of political parties (left-wing or right-wing, extremist or not).
• Shape: Political logos, scales of power play, hammer of justice, hammer and sickle, rose of labour and the working classes, circle to show unity, angles to show discord.
• Colour: Political colours of red and blue to show opposing sides, green for the Green Party, yellow for the Lib Dems, a blur of colour to show overlapping, uncertainty.
• Texture: Blurry textures to show the overlap in political agendas and manifestos, parties not really standing for what they used to. Bricks / a brick wall - has illustration hit a brick wall? Has politics hit a brick wall? How can texture convey design doing and design thinking?
• Collage: Collaging these elements together. Perhaps to create a tongue-in-cheek political poster like Shrigley's? What are the core elements of a political poster / propaganda? Re-appropriate those themes and subvert them to give a new meaning and a make a comment on Zeegen's quote and Shrigley's piece.