Visual Metaphor

First I trawled the newspapers and mags for Visual Metaphors.. and found quite a range. Too many to post here, but they are all in a packet for future reference.

I then went to my logbook to have a bit of a brainstorm about the different topics, and found that Broken Relationship yielded the most visual images to play with, the problem was that they were all a bit cliched. 

log page

After that, I went to my sketchbook and started to get some ideas down on the page.

sketchbook page

3 images from my sketchbook

I quite liked the broken heart and the cupid falling, as long as they didn't end up twee. And I quite liked the broken home, with the children standing under falling debris. 

I then had an idea for Censorsip of the Press - based on the 3 wise monkeys, but this time they could hear evil and see evil, but not speak it.

hear evil, see evil, but speak NO evil

and finally I thought of gagging the technology so I used censorship tape round a lap top, a hostage style bag over a desktop and some barbed wire around a computer, tv and newspaper. I had a problem with the TV because modern tvs are more or less all flat now but I had to make it into an old cathode ray to make it look like a tv to me!

bound laptop, gagged pc and barbed wired 'media' images

Thinking in metaphor is a very useful exercise. I think that I naturally am quite literal, so this is an area I will have to work on! For a succesful Visual Metaphor I think one needs to use images that are shared and accessible, but somehow steer away from cliche, add an element of surprise, or use cliche for a specific purpose, not neccessarily the obvious.  Not easy.