Giving Instructions

Making a cup of Tea - Without a tea pot (shock horror)

Initial ideas
Each stage to appear to be on individual cards laid in order from top of the page to the bottom, slightly over laid or touching.

My proposed contents of the sequence cards:

Some other layout ideas

Laid over a 'steam' pattern

At the top of  steam jets above a kettle

A variation on the 'steam' idea

Whilst thinking of ways to show the instruction stages with a steam background and thinking about words associated with tea latched on to - tea time - hence a tea making clock...

I quite like this idea and see the multiple hands being of varying length or tonally gradated to indicate the order of the instructions.

Still exploring other ideas I then considered the question - what goes with tea - cake, a cake stand and I can make it multi - tiered with an instruction on each.

I quite like this idea too - but on reflection I could see a flaw. Like a cake on a stand you can make your selection from any level, perhaps this is also the case in respect of the order of the sequence. The order does not appear obvious.

Alternative ideas are sugar cubes in a block with an instruction on each - this may have problems with order. I also contemplated using actual teabags each with an image applied to it; in some form.

But I decided to concentrate on the clock face idea.

Giant Teabag

 This is a new improved mock up of the intended design, the thought crossed my mind that the clock face could be a round teabag with the hours added but having played about with some images I decided that it added nothing and certainly detracted from the idea of conveying instructions.

This is my completed piece. I feel that the clock face idea lends itself as a natural way for the viewer to read the order of the instructions. I reinforced this by slightly overlapping each image in the sequence. I considered dropping the clock hands from the piece but found that without them the clock lost some significance and the sense of movement you get with them adds to the notion of a sequence to follow. 

Each image was drawn with an artpen and the steam cloud outlines were then added. I cut them in to individual sections with a scalpel following the outer contours of the steam. Then pasted them onto the clock face I had previously added the extra hands to using photoshop. The tone that forms the background is by virtue of the scanning process. I liked the effect so kept it.