Intentions: A Junior Self-Portrait Illustration by Arlene Oriel (2013)

A big topic in my personal essay was having good intentions. I wanted this to also be my focus for my illustration in Design. In my essay, I showed that having good intentions is an admirable thing. In my illustration, I also wanted to show that although having good intentions is a very positive and admirable thing, it does not always contribute to good decisions and actions.

In my illustration, we see a random passerby stopping to give some money to a disheveled homeless man. The passerby has good intentions, as he thinks the money he is giving will be used for food. But we see a thought bubble hovering over the homeless man’s head. The thought bubble contains a bottle of beer, indicating that the money will not go towards feeding him, but rather feeding his addiction. This part of the picture represents bad decisions. Although these are two different people with very different intentions, the good intentions of the passerby still fuel the homeless man’s bad intentions, even though the passerby is unaware and was just trying to do a good deed. Even though I communicated this message through two people in my illustration, good intentions leading to bad decisions often happens to individual people. Bad decisions are fueled by good intentions all the time.