This custom guitar pickguard explores themes of mortality, mental health, emotional struggle, and identity through the visual language of rock, grunge, and metal music. Inspired by skeletal structures, organic forms, and psychological symbolism, the design reflects the darker emotions often expressed within these genres, including anxiety, isolation, vulnerability, and confrontation with mortality.
The intertwining bone-like forms reference decay and the fragility of life, while the irregular abstract shapes act as metaphors for the complexity of mental health, rejecting notions of perfection and stability. Together, these elements create a visual tension between structure and disorder, strength and vulnerability.
By transforming a traditionally functional guitar component into an expressive artefact, the work explores how objects associated with music and performance can communicate personal experiences, emotions, and subcultural identity. Through digital modelling, CNC machining, and material experimentation, the pickguard becomes both a symbolic and physical representation of the themes embedded within the music that inspired it.