A Map of My Soul
When I was enrolled in Design 230 (Intro. to Design for Non-Majors) at Ohio State, we often tackled problems by “mapping” them out with visual imagery. We not only mapped problems, contexts, and solutions, but also the personalities of our intended users. I decided to map myself as an introductory post. 
A bit about the process ’cause this is really abstract: I created this image in PhotoShop CS2 by using only images I already had saved on my computer. I figured it would be more truthful that way because the images I keep on my computer reflect things that I like and want to have around me. I think you’ll notice pretty quickly that there are some obvious themes in the images I’ve posted here… if I did this correctly you should be able to learn a lot about my personality within a second of looking at it. I didn’t pick these themes intentionally… I just let my instincts guide me and dragged and dropped images with rapid-fire speed. I made sense of it visually afterwards.
Sorry if this image is huge for you… I have a crazy 19-inch monitor.
Can you guess anything about my personality by looking at this?
I was going to write about the themes in this image but I think it’d be more fun to see if YOU can tell me what you see in this!
I’d just like to add for the sake of ethics that most of these images were taken randomly from the Internet. One photo is from a friend (the flamenco dancer from Salamanca, Spain - I saw this show in person with him!) and two of them (the railroad in Moab, Utah and the circle of candles on the altar) are my own. The pink-and-purple faerie is art by Amy Brown, one of my current favorite artists; you can check out more neat faeries at http://www.amybrownart.com. CLAMP drew the Clover art (the girl with robotic wings on the green backdrop) and the short-haired angel in the Spanish icon is art from the anime Haibane Renmei. All of the small 100 x 100 squares are LiveJournal icons I created; many of them feature unknown artists, so I’m sorry I can’t tell you what they are from. Feel free to tell me if you know.
Now it’s time for a nap… this post was way too long. Expect some stick figures or something tomorrow. ;P
Last 5 posts by singingwren
- valentines! - February 15th, 2008
- patterns and a brochure cover - February 13th, 2008
- i'm back - February 12th, 2008
- chaos (fixed i think :)) - February 6th, 2008
- It's a jungle in there! - February 5th, 2008
that’s a cool idea, and yours is a great map, very eclectic!
I looked at the collection of photos more in the way of inspiration and association, are the pictures of the map intended to be looked at as “literal” parts? (i hope that’s in any way understandable…)
glad you liked it
Nope, they aren’t intend to be “literal” parts… in the end this piece became really symbolic, but at first I was just gathering photos that inspired me or made me happy. I didn’t realize I had that many Nature images.
Very joyous!
Good idea chica. I might have to do this one day. I really do enjoy making things like this.