Autobiographical Token

for this assignment, we were tasked with designing a token that chronicles the essence of yourself. We were allowed to use pictorial elements that helped represent our chosen story about ourselves. We were also asked to include text within our projects and could use a physical element as part of our design.

we considered the following:

• What is the essence of you?

• What are your joys and regrets?

• Who and what do you keep in your orbit and why?

• Who or what inspires you?

• Who do you love?

• How do you see yourself?

to get a general idea of what I wanted to tell through my project, I spent time thinking about my defining characteristics and other aspects of myself that are prominent in who I am. I wanted my project to center around the idea of personal growth and change. I wanted to highlight the struggles of tough experiences, anxieties, and my ability to overcome them. I feet that my experiences in the last year made me who I am today and helped me learn a lot about myself. I feel that each experience you face and overcome changes you forever, you are constantly growing with everything you experience in life. Without these experiences and my ability to overcome them, I would not be the person I am today. Overcoming obstacles is important to me, yet I've also started to struggle with anxiety and insecurities because of them. Being big parts of my life and general concept, I wanted to include the impact they've left as well.

I then thought about how I wanted to communicate my ideas physically and metaphorically. I wanted to compare my internal growth and change with a garden and butterflies. The garden would metaphorically represent healing from my experiences and my ability to grow into the person I am now.

I wanted to use imagery of butterflies throughout my piece to symbolically represent my internal changes along with myself. Butterflies represent transformation and growth, so I felt using them would be a good way to help convey my ideas.

I decided to use these two metaphors together as butterflies are commonly present with plants and gardens. I wanted to use this as symbolism as they not only have similar meanings metaphorically but because I wanted to push the idea that through my transformations, I was able to grow this wonderful life around me to exist within. Almost as if I'm a butterfly existing within my own garden.

I then thought about how I wanted to represent my ideas physically. I ultimately wanted my finished project to be 3D while using photoshop for my actual design. I collaged a long graphic that I printed out and rolled up into a box. Once opened, the box would reveal a garden within. When presented, I wanted the collage to come out of the box, "growing" out of the garden. I digitally created a cut paper collage featuring my own imagery, poetry, and photography combined with minimal found imagery online. I wanted it to create a scrap book or visual journal kind of feel, like a log of my thoughts and feelings with text. I wanted to communicate who I was through my imagery, either images of interests, personal aesthetic, or myself. I do a lot of collaging with my personal work, so I thought it would be a good medium to represent myself with.

I then spent time gathering visual research to reference when creating my collage and box. Using Pinterest, other websites, or recommended material, I created a slideshow to keep all my inspiration together.

After collecting inspiration, I gathered imagery from my camera roll to collage with. I used some photographs I took and incorporated text with each one. I wrote poems that would represent my concept and paired them with a couple images. I either typed the text directly onto them, or printed out, cut, and scanned my text back in and pasted it onto my photos. I wanted to add a more raw, physical collage look to my text and add some variety.

each poem acts as a look into my thoughts about different events I've struggled with. Each one focuses on something different, either relationships, friends, struggles, or faults, they are supposed to act as a gateway into my mind and convey my personal struggles.

I then created a long document in photoshop and started combining these images with my other chosen ones. I created a background to collage onto and then started cutting out elements from my images that I felt accurately represented different parts of myself. While most imagery is my own, I did look online for additional pictures too collage with would help convey my narrative.

I wanted my poetry to mentally represent myself while my imagery would physically represent myself.

I then started working on the box my collage would go inside. I painted it and decorated the inside with moss to look like a garden. I added mushrooms and butterflies to help fill up space and to increase the look I was going for.

With my project almost being finished, I printed out and taped my collage into one consecutive strip of paper. I rolled it up, and stored it inside the box. For presentation, I left it half rolled up and trailing out of the box. I encouraged people to fully unroll it and lay it flat to get a closer look at my design.