Most Wanted – Create An Icon

For this project, we have been asked work in pairs to create one photograph that visually explains the story of how our Most Wanted face was arrested. We have been given the mug shot of a legend and an icon of a generation, Elvis Presley. We have also been given the story of the arrest.

There are 3 steps in this brief:

Create an icon. It has to represent the reason why the character was imprisoned. (the Mafia – the Russian Revolution – the Cuban Uprising – Civil Rights Movement – Freedom of Expression – Sex, Drugs and Rock’n’Roll ). You will research the iconography related to the topic and create a new icon/symbol to represent it.
Art Direction. Your photograph will be taken in a studio (not outdoors). You will create an art direction for your photograph. You will decide the aesthetics of the lighting, the clothing, the staging, the casting of models, their characterisation, the props. You will also design the composition of the scene, based on each story. Also, you have to include the icon you designed somewhere in the scene.
Postproduction. You will improve and retouch the photograph in postproduction. This has to be coherent with the art direction.

The Arrest:

“In 1970, ten days after meeting President Richard Nixon at the White House, Elvis Presley was invited on a private visit to FBI headquarters. It was probably on this occasion that he went along with having his full face and profile photo taken. It is said that the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, refused o meet the King because he was ‘wearing all sorts of exotic dress'”.

– “Mug Shots. An archive of the famous, infamous and most wanted” Book by Raynal Pellicer

Create an icon

To begin, me and my partner Katie have created a mood board of Elvis to gain a better understanding of his iconography. We have looked at his general aesthetic as a starting point. By doing this, we have recognised that Elvis has been widely recognised for his iconic dance moves and fashion, including his hair, stage costumes and glasses.

Research:

After our mood board, we decided to do some more research on Elvis. We watched a documentary called “The Final Hours of Elvis Presley”. We chose to look at this documentary in particular as we hoped it would enlighten us on his life leading up to his death. Elvis’ mug shot was taken in 1970, and died shortly after in 1977. We hoped by watching this documentary, we could gain knowledge on what his life was like at the time of his “arrest”.

Notes from documenary:

From our notes, we understood that Elvis was a very unhappy man in the few years leading up to his death. We learnt that a vicious spiral of drug and alcohol addiction wasn’t the cause of his death, but did play a part. Around the time of his “arrest”, Elvis’ mental deciline had begun, but was was somewhat under contol. We also found out that the early 1070’s were big for Elvis. He had many shows and broke his atendance records. He had divorced with Priscilla and had returned to the top of the music charts. As for inconography, we dicovered that his famous, oversized glasses were worn to conceal his Glaucoma. By watching this documentary, we have gained some general knowledge on Elvis which has helped us visualise his character a little better.

Early 1970’s:

Next, we looked at what was going on in the early 1970’s. We felt that it was important to understand and visualise the time period as well, to get a feel for the time and what was happening. We found that the early 1970’s saw a dramatic increase in the Hippy movement, advocasy for world peace and Environmentalist movements. There was also alot of hostility towards the authority of the American Government.

The fashion at this time was flamboyant; tight fitting pants and platform shoes for both men and women were the main fashion trends at this time and bright colours were everywhere.

For music, the 1970’s was a Golden era for Vinal records and Disco, Rock, Soul and Jazz were heavily listened to. Elvis also reappeared in concert after taking time off to be in film in the 60’s.

Symbol

Now that we have done some generic research, we haved moved onto the process of creating our symbol. To start off, we have made a moodboard of inspirtation, focusing on colour, shape and iconography. By making this moodboard, we have realised how important the shape of our symbol will be, as the shape alone can give completely different looks and meaning to the symbol.

Shape Psychology

Circles

Circles are quite soft shapes in comparison to shapes like triangles and squares. Circles and rings can be connected with commitment and marriage, so in a logo, can symbolise an important bond. Circular shapes can also be associated with femininity by the fluid curves and softness.

The spherical shape of the Nasa logo (bottom left) is the same shape as planets, and clearly represents the unity of our plant Earth. The Olympic rings (bottom right) have a similar meaning of unity as well. The interlocking rings have a strong feel of community and teamwork. Both symbols convey a sense of community and close bond.

In terms of using a circle for our Elvis symbol, we think it could work quite well in communicating a sense of community within the Elvis fan base. By using a circle, the interior will be almost protected, symbolising comfort and a close community.

Squares and Rectangles

Squares and rectangles are often associated with strength, safety, balance and stability. Most secure, strong everyday things are rectangular or square in shape, such as a house, a brick, a table etc. These shapes also have a professional feel to them, as shown in logos such as the BBC and Microsoft, also symbolising reliability.

For our symbol, we feel this isn’t the right shape to go with. At the time of Elvis’ mug shot (1970) Elvis was struggling with alcohol and drug addiction, which is the opposite of the balance and stability associations of squares and rectangles.

Triangles

Triangles, specifically upwards facing triangles, have a sense of hierarchy and direction. They are masculine and powerful shapes with strong, clean edges. Through research, triangles appear to be most commonly used in construction and motor companies.We don’t feel that this shape will add anything to our symbol, so have ruled this out as a possible shape to be used in our symbol.

To help with symbol ideas, we have decided to take a look at some of Elvis’ album colours.

What stood out to us the most was that quite a few albums have a lot of red. We were intrigued by the constant use of this colour and decided to look into the psychology and connotations, while keeping Elvis’ character in mind.

Traditionally, red is known as a dangerous or violent colour, often linking to blood, however it is also the colour of love and passion. In his early career, Elvis was a big icon, especially to women and teenage girls. We believe the use of red on the album colours have the connotation of love, passion and even lust. In his early career, Elvis was known for his charm, kindness and sex appeal. Because these characteristics are well associated with Elvis, we would like to try and make the use of red in our next symbol ideas. It is also a colour commonly used in Rock and Roll culture, being the main colour of The Rolling Stones, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Motör Head logos.

First symbol ideas

For my first ideas, I did two simple silhouettes of Elvis. The design of the top left hand side was inspired by Elvis’ Jailhouse Rock dance moves. The design on the top right hand side is a generic silhouette of Elvis. These are only starting points, and I will show these designs to my group partner and we will decide if we can work and develop them, or may come up with some new ideas. If these designs were to be developed, I would frame them in a suitable shape from our research on shape psychology.

The design on the bottom left was inspired by the shape of the FBI badge, which was the reason the mugshots of Elvis were taken. We felt that the shape captured the main reason of the project. We then added the FBI headquarters in the background and an iconic design of Elvis (the hair and glasses). Overall we are happy with the ideas behind the design but are unsure on the aesthetics. For the design on the bottom right, we changed the FBI badge shape to a circle, to represent a sense of community within the Elvis fan base. By using a circle, the interior almost looks protected, symbolising comfort and a close community. The circle gave us the idea of using our symbol as a buckle on Elvis’ icon belt. Within the circle, we have incorporated the iconic hair and glasses like in the first draft, but making it head on instead a side view. We feel that this is, as a whole, a much stronger image. The small circles within the bigger ones will be diamonds which will be added if we go ahead in making the symbol as a belt piece. Both symbols have been hand drawn.

Me and Katie have been thinking about how we will incorporate the symbol in our photograph.

The idea that first struck us was to use the symbol as a badge, but we felt that this would be too distracting on his chest. We then looked at using our symbol as a ring, but this meant that our photographs would all have to have Elvis’ hand in them, which wasn’t the pose we were keen on. After going back and forth through possible ideas, we decided to feature our symbol as a belt buckle. One of Elvis’ iconic wear is his belt, so we think it would be a good idea to make our symbol bold and part of his iconic fashion, while also not being too distracting.

We spoke to the technicians in multiple workshops to see how we can make the buckle. We first thought that our best option would be to Laser Cut the design on wood and spray paint it gold or silver. After speaking with the technicians in the wood and metal workshops, we chose that metal would be our best option. The technician in the metal workshop advised us to go into the printmaking workshop and acid-etch our design onto a metal plate, then he would assist us in cutting the badge/buckle to shape.

Making the buckle

We began by re-drawing our symbol on Adobe Illustrator in order to transfer the image onto the zinc plate. Redrawing the symbol in Illustrator enabled us to get the symbol as accurate as we could and perfect the smaller details. After this was done, we saved the file as a PDF and the technicians in the print workshop transferred it onto the plate in the darkroom and then exposing to UV light. Next, we prepared the Copper Sulphate bath and left the zinc plate in the bath for around an hour. The Copper Sulphate etched away at the parts of the plate which were exposed to light. We then removed the plate from the bath and poured some acid to help dissolve the blue film that protected other parts of the plate from being etched. After 10 minutes, the blue film began to bubble and we were able to wipe it off using an old, clean rag. Finally, we rinsed the plate in water and then used Brasso to polish it up.

Since the symbol was etched onto a rectangular plate, we then had to head down to the metal workshop and cut the symbol into the FBI Badge shape. First, we used a metal guillotine to cut off the excess metal before sanding down into a more rounded shape.