IC3 Culture Codes

Made for my Final Major Project during my third year at university. I decided to look into the way that cultures are ‘coded’ to be defined and expressed to the outside world in different ways e.g. body art, hairstyles, jewellery, clothing etc. I wanted to subvert the negative connotations associated with the police identity code IC3 by creating print that was a bright, bold and joyful self-defined and celebratory visual identity for black culture. The designs experiment with the characters ‘I’ ‘C’ and ‘3’ in abstract forms and the code’s phonetic sounds ‘eye’ and ‘icy’ inspired their form (e.g. the use of diamond shapes as the word ‘icy’ connotes expensive jewellery in slang terms).