Verbal/Visual Metaphor- Typography
Student project for Advanced Typography class at Champlain College- The objective was to create a metaphor poster, ranging from verbal to visual in presentation. Chosen metaphor is a series on hearing loss/hearing impairment.
The series shows a steady progression of voices being added to the space:
The 1st panel carries a single voice, where even with no surrounding audio distractions, words and sounds can be garbled and lost, and the listener has to fill in the blanks; that hearing loss can be a constant game of 'fill-in-the-blank'.
The 2nd panel shows the voice starting to dissolve as other voices join it. The voices are comprehensible, themselves, but lose legibility when they begin to overlap and overwhelm one another. There is an overlay of common phrases people say when asking for clarification.
The 3rd panel adds more voices, and incomprehension. At a glance, it resembles gibberish, but taking a closer look reveals that some of the voices can be unscrambled and read. This however, takes an extra second to decipher, and therefore illustrates how a person with hearing loss has to take an extra second to decipher what a person has said. This sort of extra critical analysis leads to constant mental exhaustion. It ends with a resigned, "haha, yeah", allowing the conversation to move on at the loss of their own understanding of what was said, and conceding that they are likely not going to understand anytime soon.
The 4th panel is a crowded room, and a complete loss of any comprehensive voice for the listener. The listener understands that words are being said, they can hear fragmentary letters, but cannot decipher anything that at all anymore.
