I L L E G A L I T Y
Third Year Project
My whole final major project was on the theme of how prisoners hide things.
I had a year to do a lot of research for this project. I decided to go into a prison and see how it works. While I was in there, I managed to see real contraband weapons that the inmates had managed to make. I also got to see/find out how they smuggle them around the prison with so many guards about. The most common way was in bibles. What they did was cut the bible/book inside to the shape and depth of there weapon, this was to ensure it was hidden and not bulking out.
Every book needs a case. Basing that my subject was prison, I decided to design/build a prison door out of wood. I wanted it to look official and real, giving us the shabby and rough effect. I also wanted to give it that sense where the prisoners are locked up 24/7 but making a key to open it.
Here I have tried to be clever, I used one of Stefan Sagmeister techniques. I used yellow text so it could be hidden with the orange acetate to then make it look like a blank block. This was sticking to my theme of ‘hidden’.
The yellow text has also a hidden message inside. The bits in yellow are code words that prisoners say to hide from the guards. My little book that slides out my concertina is then the ‘decoder', which is basically just telling you what them code words mean.
