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Edward Tufte's Chapter 7 from Visual Explanations proposes a new genre of visual/verbal composition: the Visual Confection.
For this project, create such an image using Photoshop.
A Concept Visualized
Your confection should bring together words and images that visualize a complex set of ideas: an argument, a multifacited definition, a set of detailed choices, the cause-and-effect relations in a process, etc. This concept could be drawn from your major, a book, an album of music (especially a "concept" album), etc. An "anayltical concept" is
an abstract idea or general phenomenon broken down into its component parts that are elaborated in their dynamic relations for the purpose of explanation or memory.
Examples of "concepts" might include Greg Ulmer's Theory of the Manifesto, or Hayden White's "Narrative of Discovery," or Winifred Gallagher's explanation (following Grant Hildebrand) of why some buildings appeal more to us than others. It would be best to choose a concept that you know and find revealing.
Confection vs. Collage
Avoid creating a simple collage, which combines images in suggestive but diffusely intended ways. Instead, aim at producing what Tufte calls a "miniature theatre of information" that makes "reading and seeing and thinking identicial" (138, 151).
Image(s) Should Dominate
Your confection may include some supplemental text, but the explanatory weight should be carried mostly by the confection itself, which should be one (perhaps multifacited) image.
Resources and Examples:
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