~ Up yer sleeve - visual research ~

Visual research - Within my contextual research I discovered the true tragedy of her life story and death. I felt that through her life she had been given a really bad name and portrayal within the media. I wanted my design to celebrate her as an artist and make a positive representation of something sad.

I looked to my visual research to find examples which I felt combined reality and positivity in a way that could work for this brief.

For me an obvious choice of visual research was pop art. The art form was known for taking and re-working things - quite often the tragic or mundane and creating something bright, colourful and appealing out of them. This example shows Roy Liechtenstein's work depicting a plane shooting another down - a tragic scene put created in a comic book style with colour theory that is positive and appealing. 

Keith Haring - He was another element of visual research. His designs are illustrative, colourful and instantly give you a feeling of positivity. But much of Haring's work had deep meaning behind it. 

For example he produced work during the aids crisis to help raise awareness - doing so in a positive way. Creating awareness of something bad in a positive reflective way. 

I then looked at by far the most iconic person within the pop art movement - Andy Warhol. He re-used images often screen printing them in bright colours. This re-cycling of images brought them into a whole new light completely changing the tone of voice and overall atmosphere within the designs. This is something really simple - showing how much simple colour theory can change somethings context. 

I then looked at contemporary examples of design which take inspiration from the pop art movement. In this case Kate Morross - her work uses illustrative style and colour to create a bold and positive feeling to the designs. I really find her use of shape appealing yet simple - its something that adds celebration to a design and could be applied to this brief well.

Lastly I looked at the work of Hattie Stewart. Her work is very inspired by pop art often creating 'doodle bombs' where she illustrates over existing images and magazine covers. This theme of re-cycling images and reworking them into something much more positive and 'designed' is very pop art in a contemporary context.