Project Statement
In this project, I chose the narrative, “A Girl Child Named Linda,” and created a collage based on the feelings, sensory details, theme etc. of the song. My aim was to prioritize design principles to create a sense of harmony within my piece. I decided to focus on the elegant aspects of the song and make my work light and soft. The story mentions bright places, such as Heaven, so I wanted to capture that in my collage. I prioritize lots of pastel colors, as well as white because of the mentions of lace, ivory, white jade towers, and doves in the narrative. The two hands in the middle represent Heaven and Earth; one is reaching up to the doves, as if to Heaven, and the other is reaching down and touching the golden flowers, representing Earth. In this collage, there is lots of movement: a trail of flowers leading up to the castle, as well as the arch of the wing that showcase that. The clouds represent her mind and head space, while also being the hair of the figure. This adds sort of a circular movement as well. Overall, this piece is very pastel and peaceful, and make the viewer feel as though they are looking at a depiction of heaven.
Process
View detailed project process at Interpretive Collage: Process
Reflection
This project has been one of the most enjoyable for me as a design student. I loved being able to use my creativity to make a collage based on my interpretations. I think the most amazing aspect of design is just the ability to interpret and communicate things to an audience in a variety of ways. This project taught me to really think deep about how I want to communicate a narrative to someone, and how to use design elements and principles to do so. Additionally, I was taught many things about Photoshop through the variety of tutorials given by my professors during the process. I was not very advanced in Photoshop coming into the project, but feel a lot more confident about it now. I was taught techniques such as masking, adding depth through shadows, and cropping images to fit together in space. In this process, I had some difficulty making objects appear more 3D, but with some help from Taylor and online tutorials, I was supplied with enough information to make my piece meet my expectations. I also had some trouble cutting out images and making the edges look clean and crisp. Some of my objects were cut very jagged, so I just had to go in and clean them up with the eraser tool. This project really helped me show my creativity and allowed me to improve my skills of using imagery to communicate a narrative.