Doctrine of Signatures Poster
Project
Collection Poster, 16” x 20”
4 weeks
Course
Word & Image I
Advised by Vidhya Nagarajan
Software
Adobe InDesign
Adobe Photoshop
Skills
Typesetting
Layout
Collection Poster, 16” x 20”
4 weeks
Course
Word & Image I
Advised by Vidhya Nagarajan
Software
Adobe InDesign
Adobe Photoshop
Skills
Typesetting
Layout
Tasked to create a collection poster under the broader topic of medicinal plants, I found great interest in exploring the Doctrine of Signatures, a belief throughout centuries that plants have a "signature"—color, texture, shape, scent, even the environment in which they grow—that resembles the body parts and diseases they heal. Thus, walnuts, with a brain-like shape, were thought to heal head ailments, and sliced mushrooms were thought to heal earaches, and so on.
After further research, I decided to explore the overlap between plants with supposed healing powers and their bodily counterparts, placing plants in a collaged nature to form the human body. Through a long process of iteration, I toyed with composition, hierarchy, typesetting, color, and image manipulation to create a final product that captures the heart (or viola tricolour) of my topic.