Recognition Day - Shortlist

Here is the first from the designs that made it to my shortlist, which was derived from personal evaluation and crit feedback.

I wanted to create something that had very powerful imagery in hopes aid communicate better how powerful the act of forgiveness can be.
I also felt that some of the initial images were too cluttered and I decided to create something that was simple, yet effective.

This is what I came up with:The first image is one of the original photos that I took. The soap is used as a metaphor to convey that forgiveness can clean any hurt (stained hands). The washing of hands is symbolic of innocence in todays society and it could be credited to the story of Jesus' death where Pontius Pliate says washes his hands in front of the crowd and says, "I am innocent of this man's blood," .

I could have used an original photo on its own but I decided to edit it as I wanted to create a stark contrast between the white of the soap and the black of the stain, thus I increased the brightness/contrast and desaturated the image.

I used a scalpel to cut letters out of the soap and stained it with ink using a syring, which was a very messy job and crafting is far from one of my strongest points and the word 'forgive' was very illegible due to this. I liked the aesthetics but the message wasn't clear, so I decided to use photoshop to create the impression that it had been engraved professionly... but no matter what I did it ended up looking unconvicing.