Visual Metaphors

Visual metaphors are used throughout today's society, they can be found in advertisement and various different medias. Artists also use metaphors to express their ideas and feelings, a famous example is the street artist Banksy. His work is meaningful and very political, it expresses his feelings towards the society we live in. Banksy creates a powerful message in his work. In the lesson we were pushed to explore ways in which we could create our own metaphors and then apply them to our final piece. 

What is a visual metaphor?

Visual Metaphors, at their finest, can be the most powerful forms of communication. They are made when a subject is portrayed in relation to another unrelated subject or context. 

For example one of Banksy’s pieces shows a white dove which a symbol of piece wearing a military jacket with a red target pointed directly at it as if it’s about to be shot down by a rifle. This juxtaposition of imagery reflect the war and political issues.

Other example include images in advertisement. For example this poster advertising trainers. The imagery implies that running will keep you fit and healthy and that these trainers are perfect for the practising the sports you love.

I want to use metaphors in my own work to convey my message of how memories fade over time and to represent my summer holidays. But first I made up some of my own visual metaphors in the lesson. We had a selection of phrases to choose from; vacuum, hair slide, traffic jam, energy drink. I chose to create a visual metaphor on energy drink. I thought of the complete opposite of energy was death, so I represented this as a skeleton. So I drew the two together. I think my outcome worked well as it is amusing and gets the message across.

I made my skeleton look depressed and then drew a cocktail glass being filled with objects that represent energy. On the right is a sun and on the left in a volcano. I then developed my idea further by testing out different scenarios. My peers suggested that an energetic activity could be dancing so I drew a dancing skeleton in the underground. This image was one of my favourites as it is hilarious. There are computers sitting quietly in their seats staring at a phosphorescent skeleton dancing. This idea was an interesting visual metaphor however I believe it lost the idea of an energy drink which is what I initial wanted to represent.

Therefore I developed my idea further by incorporating the name of a well-known energy drink in my metaphor: Lucozade. I made it look as if the drink was pouring out into the skeletons open mouth and giving him energy. At first I made the liquid black this wasn’t very effective as it didn’t look as if it was energy more like a poison, so I layered it with tracing paper and made the liquid malty coloured I think this was very effective as it shows my development of ideas and it is the best representation of the phrase energy drink.