Sir Thomas Thumb

The start of the week brought with it a Monday morning presentation. The class had been working on a Pictorial Narration project for five weeks, and time was finally up, we had to present our final pieces. At the start of the semester we all had to choose a story/ fairytale from the not so lucky dip.

I chose Tom Thumb, a story that I was not at all familiar with. So my initial starting point was to find out what this children's story entails. What I did discover was not pretty; little Tommy has a terrible time. He is forever getting into accidents and sadly after many years of hurting himself he dies when a spider breathes on him! So not the most happy children's story I have read!

The purpose of this project was to tell the story through another form of visual language. This could be anything from road signs to paint swatches. After lots of research into the various visual signs available I decided to explore medical language as I thought it was fitting to my story. I looked into medical and death records, as well as the language used on prescription labels.

I decided to produce both a medical and death record to explain the story. I was able to adapt the information on these records to suit the story; changing the NHS to King Arthur's Health Service, using the Round Table logo as a corporate identity and most importantly fill in all sections with information about the story. The prescription I made was for Growth Hormone as I thought it was important to get across to the audience that he was quite a small guy!

After producing these final pieces I still felt I needed something to connect them all together so I went back to my sketchbook. I found an image of medical files and how hospitals, etc use colour coded lables to identify a patients file. Letters and dates are applied to these files, so I decided to do the same. I got myself 25 files and put labels on them all, so that they acted as a decoy. Only one of them contained Tom Thumbs information and I wanted someone in the class to try and find the correct file.

On Monday I decided to wear my mum's stethoscope (to try and portray a doctor!) and asked my presentation group to take on the role of medical students. I then asked one member to take the prescription and find the patients file from the pile I gave them. After a little bit of thinking my volunteer managed to work it out. From there the group were able to read through the medical file and discover the unfortunate life of Sir Thomas Thumb.

I felt everyone in my group produced some really interesting final pieces. We had all used different forms of visual communication, but each worked effectively. Whilst some people, like myself, relied on text other group members told their story through signs and even blue prints. It was really good to try and work out what story each other had been given. It was also another project which didn't rely on computers, people could make things by hand or produce pieces which people could interact with. As time goes on I am really starting to enjoy creating designs such as this.