Afishionados,

Typically I reserve posting any design work until after I turn in the assignment. However, I feel pretty confident that I am done with this one, aside from some very minor tweaking here and there. It’s due Thursday, but you get to see it today because I care about each and everyone of of you dearly¹ and I am in a sharing mood².

This assignment has been one of my more entertaining ones (in terms of creating it). Each student in the class was given the option to choose one of the human rights from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I wanted Article 5, which states:

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

A lot of my school work up to this point has been very crisp and clean, and I wanted to get my hands dirty, so to speak. I was instructed to choose up to three human rights in the event that I could not get my first choice, but thankfully I ended up getting it.

The stipulations for the assignment were very general and open-ended. The finished product has to be at least 18″ x 24″ and must contain the right in its entirety. Because this is for my advanced typography class, it must also incorporate type in some fashion. Here is what I came up with:

The most difficult part of this whole composition was getting people to read the human right in the correct order. I presented this in it early state to various people all over campus and asked them to read it. Everyone could make it to “torture” but then got confused as to the correct order after that. Originally, the human right read from left to right and spanned across the blood spilled beneath the wrist. Instead, the gap created by the blood divides the right into two separate columns (like a newspaper article). Once I rearranged the human right text to follow the column-like setup, people were able to read it correctly (and hopefully you were able to as well).

The arm in the photo is my own. I’m right-handed, so I had to take a photo of my left arm in order to get a usable shot. I laid out some scrap paper on my desk and snapped it under a fluorescent light. After some quick Photoshopping, I removed the “seams” from the stacks of overlapped paper. My arm is the only subject matter in the initial photo. Everything else was digitally added after the fact. The very first thing I did was remove most of the color from my arm to give it a more corpse-like appearance. Doing so also tended to highlight the veins near my palm and throughout my arm.

Here is a close-up view of the arm carving. I “carved” this out using my Wacom tablet and gave it that nice gory effect in Photoshop. I can’t say as though I have ever cut myself, but after looking at people online who have, I think the illusion is pretty convincing.

All the bruises and stitches in the photo are real, by the way. They just aren’t really on my arm. My favorites are the wrist bruise and the stitches. In the early stages, I only had the blood in the photo and I wasn’t getting enough of an uneasy, disturbed reaction from people. After I added the stitches, bruises and “weapons”, people were really grossed out, as well as engrossed enough to read what the poster was about. Overly gory is ineffective if people are immediately turned off and don’t read it. I think I found a happy middle-ground.

Finally, I looked at a lot of horror movie posters for inspiration. Most, if not all, added some grain over the whole image to give it an even grittier, darker tone. It’s very subtle, but you can make some of it out in the carving photo above. This was the very last effect I did, and it’s amazing how different the poster prints with the grain than without.

I really like the medical tools and the razor blade. The stainless steel saw is fierce-looking, and really disturbs people I’ve shown this poster to. I’m also very proud of the rust effect I added to the razor blade (the image I used was that of a new, clean blade). Rusty razors are much more intimidating. Another “effect” that I am very pleased with is the shadows I added to the saw, the syringe, and the razor (sounds like a C.S. Lewis books from hell, doesn’t it?). It’s one of the effects that I hope people don’t even notice I added because that means it looks realistic, and therefore successful.

Want to see the original photo for comparison? I figured you might. Aside from removing the aforementioned “paper seams” and some very basic color correction, the photo is untouched. Here it is:

While I’m very happy with how the poster turned out, it remains to be seen what the professor thinks. I suppose if she hates it, I’ll try and sell it to Lionsgate for use as the SAW V movie poster.

¹Lies, all lies.

²Actually, I lied about that, too. I’m really in the mood for chocolate ice cream.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 1:25 am and is filed under College, Graphic Design, Nasty. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.