Grief - 'It's Something We Wear'
PGDip Graphic Design - 2021
Brief
A self initiated project where I answered the question 'what is grief?' through graphic design.
Outcome
A process model for a grief workshop which aims to give grief a visual representation and an opportunity for individuals to tackle their grief through making. Enabling others to carry out the workshop on their own empowers people suffering with grief and allows them to create something beautiful from it. The handbook has been designed to outline the process/toolkit.
Graphic Design, Workshop, Photography
Background
On the 17th of December 2020 my grandma died and I was filled with a grief I have never experienced before. This project was therefore a personal project and one that has tremendous meaning to me, an idea I felt passionate to take forward.
"JUST HEARD A RADIO programme on Cornish pasties and thought of you. Hope you're not too stressed out with deadlines etc. Am thinking of you a lot and sending oodles of love xxxxxx Grandma"
The Process
People and Grief
I spoke to several people I knew about what grief meant to them. I spent time carefully conducting interviews and found that it was very hard to talk about grief as a topic. This is part of the reason for wanting to change this narrative and make it a topic that can be openly discussed. I found that simply asking the question 'what does grief mean to you' took a lot of courage from myself. But once the topic was open for discussion, the conversations I had were meaningful and intimate, it was a lovely experience.
From these interviews one comment stuck out 'is grief something we wear?' I proceeded to consider if grief feels like something we wear, then the use of making and clothing could be explored further as a way of changing the narrative of grief, decorating clothing with vibrant colour, turning grief into something physical and beautiful. Using clothes would symbolise being able to wear our grief openly but having the ability to take it off too and put it away when we are ready.
The Workshop Process
and Design Pallet
Conducting and designing a workshop was a way to allow people to choose colours, materials, quotes to represent their grief and joy of remembering the person/people they have lost and decorate an outfit. This collaborative approach would also aim to open a safe space to share experiences with a focus on physical application to make it easier to talk about feelings.
A vital step in the process of creating the workshop was creating a visual toolkit. From speaking to individuals in interviews, certain elements, emotions, feelings kept coming up. With the idea of using beauty to tackle the negativity that covers grief, the design pallet could be used in the workshop when decorating the outfit in grief. Individuals participating in the workshop could use these elements as starting places, using colours of their choice to add them to the design. If they felt that a certain emotion resembles parts of their grief they could copy it onto the outfit. Using size can signify how strong the emotion means.
The pallet became designed cards which make up a large part of the workshop.
The Workshop
Photographic documentation
I ran the workshop where I supplied a plain garment and materials for people to use to decorate the jacket in their grief. To prepare myself for the workshop I created a guide to explain the project to the people I was running it for, and explain the design pallet of certain emotions which correlated to grief. This later became 'The Handbook.' I also documented the whole process through photography and conducted a photoshoot of the finished outfit which would be meaningful and beautiful, representing ‘this is grief’.
The Photoshoot
Outside
The photoshoot of the outfit was done the following day to give everyone time for reflection. The aim for the photoshoot was to show off the jacket and turn grief into something unexpected - almost like a fashion shoot. The jacket was the focus and showed off its colour and vibrancy to change the narrative of grief being only sad and black or grey in colour. I wanted to capture each story individually as well as everyone’s collectively showing off the voices of many.
This was a really fun part of the workshop, and we laughed a lot during the shoot. This was also a lovely way to remember the people we had lost and turn our grief into fun and happy memories.
My Grief: The threads represented the threads/veins of grief which run through me, they come in waves which was represented by the pattern of the thread. By sewing onto the inside of the jacket the lettering appears on the outside but backwards – how grief feels, hard to piece together and read, complicated and so much of it happens on the inside. Designing lettering was part of a healing process.
The Workshop Toolkit
The Handbook
Within the toolkit, the participants would have everything they need to run a grief workshop themselves. Included with the kit is The Handbook which outlines the entire process.
