Images for Leicester University

Leicester University Website

CERD
My brief for these images was for a course about research ethics. Some of the briefs were more abstract and some more concrete. 

The more abstract ones were the 4 traditions of ethical thinking, which formed framework for evaluating research studies. This ended up as the CERD framework with linocuts for each dimension. 

Theses linocuts used block colours, focusing on shape which worked well with this type of printing. They also needed to be simple images because they were going to be small, almost Logos. I did this right at the beginning of the year, starting the project before I came to university but they have just been published in the MOOC (massive open online course) and I feel that if I did them again now I would be able to consider composition better. Also the prints crinkled on the scanner so they seem like they are creating an optical illusion. However the narrative I had to portray visually was quite a challenge. In all of the images to enforce simplicity I limited each image to different tones of the same colour but to enforce individuality I made the images different colours.

Here I used the classic symbols of weights to create balance and perspective on things.

This is portraying different opportunities and choices through a mind map with different branches/paths.

Here I wanted to play on the classic 'toilet' symbol of a stick man, however as it is in an ethical context I had to also include a female. They couldn't be holding hands because I needed to respect LGBT. 

This was to portray choice and individuality, so therefore I created an almost ballot in the background showing its okay for people to make different choices.

EDUCATIONAL ETHICAL RESEARCH

The more concrete briefs were issues illustrated in educational contexts and hence related to different hierarchies of people in a school setting: the headteacher, deputy head teachers, middle leaders, teachers planning together and children as students. These images became reusable and were useful to show the way researchers look in on practice as outsiders or invite participants in.

This was a project I created right at the beginning of first term and since this I feel I have learnt a lot about character design and simplification to create characters. These are all images I have drawn from a collection of images. I used the photos for reference and collaged them together to create compositions different to the images through my illustrations. In these images I needed to consider different religions, genders and nationalities. I also hadn't really discovered photoshop and feel that they could have done with some colour enhancing and cleaning up of the watercolour.

The hands image needed to show people reaching out to other people and building relationships. I was took inspiration from an installation in an art gallery in Berlin which was a sculpture of different hands reaching up.This is the first time I had really drawn hands and used photoshop outside of university. I liked the use of fine liner lines and the white space of the hands. I also used a circle in the background because it as a shape represents never ending connection and progression and felt that as a block of colour it really added to the composition.

HANDS