In this University Brief we had to design book jackets for selected philosophical subjects, of which mine were Anarchism and Nihilism. I set about thoroughly investigating the meanings of the two philosophical concepts & discovered that what is said in the media about anarchists is not necessarily what anarchism is, its is often stereotyped as being overly violent but in reality, all that anarchist want is a stateless society; how that can be achieved can be through totally non-violent methods. With this in mind I began combining layers of texture and imagery in Photoshop to produce the book jackets. I wanted to have multiple layers to the image to visually express the complex and misunderstood nature of the concept, with images of flames, representing what we perceive as a violent philosophy and the texture of tree leaf, to show the humanist and compassionate nature with which people may not realise is part of anarchism.
Nihilism was much more difficult as the theory is essentially about the pointlessness of existence and how morals and everyday objects don’t exist or mean anything, so it was hard to produce something that represents having no meaning without that then taking on its own meaning. I focused mainly on creating an abstract image comprising obscured visual elements that could either be seen as something or nothing depending on your viewpoint (or philosophical stance). The image is a texture that looks relatively like the patterning of fingerprints, evoking themes of human existence.
