The aim of this project was to understand the use of visual communication and graphically represent the phrase "The one-eyed man is king in the country of the blind". The first six images are illustrations intended to communicate specific aspects of the phrase. The final image encompasses the entire phrase.
1. One-eyed
1. One-eyed
2. King
3. In
4. Country
5. Blind
6. Tall Poppy Syndrome
In the short story "The Country of the Blind" by H.G.Wells, a mountaineer named Nunez slips and falls down a mountain. At the bottom of his descent he finds a valley that is cut off from the rest of the world, which had become home to a community of blind people who had fully adapted to life without sight. Upon discovering that everyone is blind, Nunez begins to recite to himself "In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king". He thinks he can teach and rule them but they have no concept of sight and do not understand his attempts to explain this fifth sense to him. With this in mind, the phrase 'tall poppy syndrome' is the tendency to criticise people of genuine merit and 'cut them down', which I chose to symbolise for my final illustration.
My final illustration communicates the entire phrase as the one-eye/tall poppy and country emanate from the centre. I chose to use the white eye/poppy on black to represent the blind. As a whole, the graphic almost looks as though you are looking down on a crown, therefore representing the word 'king'.
