The interpretation of words that connect to visuals have always baffled me. Being tasked to create 4 original designs from movie quotes was not an easy task for someone with little background in Photoshop. However, through this assignment I feel that I have grown as a designer technically and also creatively through the incorporation of symbols, composition techniques and principles of design into my works. During the research phase I went online to search for quotes that were in my favourite movies. As someone who loves to watch superhero and action films, I went ahead and looked into Batman, The Avengers and my all-time favourite, Inception.  I will be going into detail about how I conceptualized my ideas and ultimately give an overview of the designs of my 4 pieces of work for this assignment.

Your Mind Is The Scene Of The Crime – Inception (2010)

I really loved how in the movie Inception, everything was based around alternate realities and dreams. As a first design of this assignment, I had issues with keeping things metaphorical and was instead making the design too literal to the quote. After consultation and some feedback, I kept some elements from my initial design that were literal such as the crime scene tape that is extended from the head of a man.

I wanted to relate this quote back to modern day issues that people are facing around the world. Social media as the name suggests, is used for connectivity and socializing. There are many positive uses to social media however, being connected might not always be a good thing. I decided to design a visual that sheds some light into the issue of how social media can sometimes affect the masses negatively.

The composition of my design for this quote is relatively simple and easy to understand. The silhouette of the smiling beer bellied man with the negative emojis in his belly represents how society is trying to wear a mask to show that they are happy on the outside however they are stomaching all the negative emotions caused by social media on the inside.

The position of the man’s neck is pointing diagonally downwards which brings us to the second focal point of this design. The old school television represents “media” and the white noise reflected on the screen of the television is a metaphor of how social media is feeding irrelevant information that is slowly hypnotizing and manipulating us. To further emphasize the idea of hypnosis, I added black and white lines like rays extending out of the television which create leading lines to help the viewer navigate around the composition. The leading lines create movement towards the man and also connects to the third element of this composition.

I have included a literal description of the part of the quote “scene of the crime” into this design. At a scene of a crime, evidence of the crime can be found and upon closer speculation by forensics, the culprit/s can be identified. I took that idea and used it in this design by including some of the major social media platform logos and embedded them into typical objects found at a scene of a murder crime such as, a handgun, bloodshed and also a chalk outline of a body. To relate it back to the quote more I created a border around these evidence with a “police do not cross” tape.

Overall, I think this design is very literal and easy for anyone to make out what I was trying to convey using the different elements to describe social media and its negative effects on society.

You Are Confined Only By The Walls You Build Yourself – Inception (2010)

For my second design, I wanted to focus again on how social media is sometimes feeding us only the information that we want to see. While we build virtual walls around ourselves we block out what’s happening around the world like the issues of terrorism, mass destruction, corruption and global warming. Compositionally I made this design symmetrical and positioned the different elements in the design as leading lines to lead the viewer to the focus of the design.

Starting in the center I placed a guy sitting in a chair with his hands on the back of his head suggesting how relaxed he is while he is facing a huge iPhone screen. The Facebook page on the iPhone screen represents social media. Initially I used 4 iPhones with 4 different social media pages however that made the design too unnecessarily complicated thus I decided to just include one. For the walls surrounding the man I also used iPhones to metaphorically represent how we are so caught up with social media that it becomes a barrier.

On the exterior of the design I started with elements of destruction like tanks and missiles all of which are slanted at an angle toward the focus of the composition.

Initially I added children crying on the sides to emphasize how there are innocent children suffering because of war. However, it was too distracting and did not coincide with the overall feel of the design, thus to further display the innocence of children involved in these wars I replaced the children from the sides with children playing on the missiles. The hands located at the bottom of the composition also forms a triangle with the apex pointing toward the main focus of this image.

Also at the bottom of the composition are chemical plant chimneys emitting black smoke conveying pollution and acting as implied lines pointing upward.

The background of the image are drought patterns on soil which symbolizes global warming.

Having all the elements working together and acting as leading lines, the focus of the composition is made obvious. The symmetrical balance used in this image also creates a sense of stability which is aesthetically appealing to the viewer.

Love Is Patient, Love Is Blind, Love Means Slowly Losing Your Mind – 27 Dresses (2008)

For the third design, I wanted to dive deeper into how I could use symbols and objects metaphorically to express a message that was not literal to the quote. I settled on the health issues of smoking. I first started with designing the man smoking on a noose hanging himself. To portray the act of him slowly killing himself I included an iceberg below the man to represent “love means slowly losing your mind” as the more he smokes, the more he will slowly kill himself. To also show the damage of smoking I included a pair of deformed lungs with holes.

Tunas are not able to pump water through their gills if they are not swimming, therefore they do not stop swimming even for a moment throughout their entire life. Taking that concept, I added some tuna fishes in the water and specifically placed them in a way to form an arrow head which points towards the iceberg.

The iceberg also acts as an implied line directing the eye toward the hanging man making it the focus of this image.  

The minimalistic details in this design makes it easy for the viewer to understand the symbols and ultimately discern the message behind the design.

Sometimes To Love Someone, You Gotta Be A Stranger – Blade Runner (2049)

Out of all the designs I prefer my final one most. Being inspired by the recent Blade Runner sequel I wanted to use a quote from the movie. I felt that the quote was really evident in USA because of all the conspiracies surrounding the government being in control of everyone’s communications and information stating that it’s all for the greater good to prevent terrorism etc. However, nobody really knows what is true or not.

I used a scarecrow as the focus of this composition as scarecrows are deemed as the protector of crops from crows and birds in farms. The scarecrow not being alive can also be seen as a stranger. However, I manipulated the scarecrow’s head and included a surveillance camera. On the surveillance camera, there is an eagle emblem which is part of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) logo.

Ever since 9/11 the United States government has greatly increased the ability of the NSA to collect and investigate information on both foreign subjects and US citizens (Sottek 2013). A secret program called PRISM captures the private data of citizens regardless of whether or not they are connected to terrorism or any wrongdoing. The surveillance camera on the scarecrow represents how the NSA is acting as a scarecrow trying to protect people from terrorist attacks while being an unknown figure.

I wanted to also represent that there is a more sinister meaning behind the design by including a hand controlling the surveillance camera like a puppet. The puppet lines converging helps to direct the attention toward the NSA eagle logo emphasizing the focus of the composition.

The angel wings at the back of the scarecrow portrays how the United States is known for their freedom however are they truly free? The globe on which the scarecrow is situated on shows how the scarecrow is watching over everything on earth exerting dominance.

The US government claims that this is for the good of the nation thus relating back to the quote about “sometimes to love someone” and the unfamiliarity of a scarecrow represents the “stranger” in the quote.

In conclusion, the Forrest Gump assignment has put me in situations where I needed to think out of the box to interpret messages through media. I have to admit it was rather daunting in the beginning however with the help of my friends and the class consultations I was able to come up with some designs that I really liked. Overall this assignment has helped me put the lessons I’ve learnt through class to use and I grew as a designer to effectively use visuals to convey a message.