For this exercise I was asked to collect as many examples of visual metaphors as I could find. In order to do this I first had to fully understand what a visual metaphor was and how it worked. The official definition of a visual metaphor is: ‘the representation of a person, place, thing, or idea by means of a visual image that suggests a particular association or point of similarity. Also known as pictorial metaphor and analogical juxtaposition’. This definition was a bit too wordy for me to understand the concept fully, so I sought to find examples to further my understanding instead. The exercise description has a very helpful example referring back to children in need and the use of Pudsey the bear, with Pudsey representing children and his bandage representing the idea of him being in need of help.
With this in mind I was then able to begin collecting examples of visual metaphors.
After I had done this I needed to choose one of the following phrases to create some ideas of visual metaphors : Reaching retirement, dreams of romance, broken relationship, censorship of the press, high achievement or economic catastrophe. I selected to create my visual list on Dreams of Romance. I started by creating a spider diagram for the two main words: ‘dreams’ and ‘romance’.
After this I tried to combine both of the spider diagrams with some small visual ideas.
After I had created these I decided to chose my favourite and the visual metaphor I believed to be most representative and create a more accurate image.
I really enjoyed this exercise and found it very useful. Relying on text is something that I was warned about in my feedback from my last assignment so seeing how to represent ideas purely through imagery was very useful to me.
Sources:
Illustration Key Steps 