November 2, 2015

Teapig Chapter Continent intro Drawings

Teapigs had commissioned a set of 6 cityscape illustrations for they’re up coming new book publication dedicated to tea. Each cityscape illustrations showing: Landmarks or key characteristics of the different regions/cities in the chapter. Each chapter looks at a number of different countries and would need landmarks from a number of different countries in one cityscape.

The Tea-related images- references to the tea information will be covered in the each relating chapter. The tea-related elements would also need to be amongst the architecture/landscape for example: teacup peeking out behind the gherkin.  The 6 cityscape illustrations and elements were broken down as follows,

Africa

Tunisia – Carthage, Zebra, Land Rover, Rooibos tea Plant, Mud Hut, Algeria – Maqam Echahid, Metal Tea Pot, Giraffe, Egypt Sphinx, Small Tea Glass

North America

Argentina/S America – Yerba mate, Sydney – Opera House, S Franciso – Golden Gate Bridge, Empire State Building (NYC), New Zealand – Sky Tower Auckland, Canada – CN Tower, Iced Tea

Eastern Europe

Uzbekkistan – Bukhara, Powder Gate Prague, Bayterek tower, Kazakstan, Russia – red square

Middle east

Jordan – Petra, Oman – Asma Bint Alawi Mosque door, Fez, Saudi Arabia – Burj Khalifa, Saudi Arabia – burj-al-arab

Northern Europe

Ireland – giant harp, Germany – Bradenburg gate, France – Eiffel tower, Britain –London eye – Route Master Bus, Netherlands– windmill

India –Taj Mahal

Cambodia, China – Great Wall, Japan – Kaimakura Daibutsu, India Rice boat, Taj Mahal

The Illustrations contained much detail within them, and with over 60 individual elements, which are made up to make a larger composition for each of the 6 cityscape illustrations. The cityscape illustrations ended up being quite intense pieces of work, I am glad they were well received by the client, and I look forward to seeing the finished illustrations published.

September 9, 2015

L’Obs Magazine Paris Map Drawing

L’Obs magazine a well know publication from Paris France, were in contact to commission a map for their up coming September edition.

The brief was to create a map of Paris with a mixture of names of streets, famous buildings and name of neighbourhoods for L’Obs magazine.

The Paris map was illustrated to scale because is was important to place 10 locations (the famous power sites) on the map for readers to be able to navigate the map and be a practical, as well as retain its illustrative look and feel, which was a important feature of the map.

I initially sketched the whole of Paris, with important and key road drawn into the map. On this occasion I choose to draw the map at a large scale, larger then I have drawn a map before at A2 size, this allowed me to drawn in a lot more detail in terms of the loads and streets. I then drew the 10 keys sites of Paris which, included the, Eiffel Tower, Champs-Elysées, Louvre Notre Dame, Cathedral Sacré-Coeur, Arc de Triomphe. As well as key Paris neighbourhoods.

The map feathered a numbered key, which was relevant to the text. These numbered keys were the locations of institutions and well know Paris powerhouses which was important and relevant to the written text of the article.

August 27, 2015

Shortlist Magazine Adidas London Running Maps

Shortlist magazine the free circular for London, were interested in commissioning map illustrations for the up coming Adidas Boost Trainer feature. The artwork had to embody a running theme to promote the new trainer.

The illustrated maps were representations of London and Manchester, since the many of the locations of each of the maps were in some cases long distances from each other; it required me to illustrate the routes in a non literal way. The campaign was to create 5 running maps, which plan out running routes of different areas of London, as well as a running route map for Manchester.

Westminster, taking in the leafy green parks of Regents park, St Johns Wood, Hyde Park, Green Park and St James park.

The architectural running map, with a route through the centre of London, with interesting architecture highlighted within the map. 1 Olympic City – see both the Anish Kapoor sculpture and the London Aquatics Centre, 2 Lloyd’s of London – Richard Rogers’ infamous ‘inside out’ building, 3 Sky Garden – London’s highest public garde, 4 The Shard by Renzo Piano, 5 London City Hall, Norman Foster and Ken Shuttleworth.

The Lambeth pop culture, running route map, which includes intresting site such as 1. Start at Leake Street Tunnel/The Vaults , 2. The Cinema Museum, 3. Charlie Chaplin blue plaque 4. o2 Academy Brixton 5. Brixton Market.

The Hackney street art route map, which takes in much of the graffiti street art of the are, which makes it one of the edgy running route maps. 1 White Church Lane, graffiti from Alice Pasquini, Hunto, Anthony Lister, Malarky, Dan Kitchener, 2 Truman Brewery/Elys Yard (visit – work by Otto Schade and others, 3 Osborne Street/Brick Lane, 4 Hanbury Street, work by Borondo, ROA, Born.K, Liliwen, Blen Slow, 5 Rivington Street, work by Eine, Bastardilla, SAM3, Stik and Cranio)

Lastly the Manchester pop culture map, with a few of the interesting and famous sites of Manchester to see while your on you run, such as, 1 Tib Street Horn: 12 meter high modern artwork studded with florescent lights, National Football Museum and Media City UK.

 

 

 

August 21, 2015

Chivas Regal The Venture Competition World Map

Excerpts from Redefining Success in a Changing World, a global report commissioned by Chivas examining new views on social entrepreneurship and the evolving perceptions of success. The report was written from a summary of survey data of more 1800 young professionals and social entrepreneurs in Mexico, Brazil, China, UK, US, and South Africa, as well as opinion-leader interviews.

I was commissioned to illustrate a large typographic map of the world, which was used as a backdrop presentation for the whisky brand Chivas Regal and The Venture competition. The competition gained over 1000 entries from around the world, of which 20 of the entries were selected and flown to San Francisco to pitch their ideas to leading businessmen and women. 5 finalists made the final cut to make their final pitch for the chance of winning $1,000,000 for their sustainable business.

The illustration was created predominately typographic, all of the wording for the map was selected from a global report commissioned by Chivas Regal. The typographic text was crafted to fit the map of the world. The scale of the map drawing was 1500cm 800cm wide. The map was drawn in sections and composed all within Photoshop. The final map would be printed close to 20m wide, for the Final presentation in San Francisco.

The Chivas Regal world map was a tough map to illustrate, The deadline was very short to work towards, and another added hurdle was a holiday I had booked to Tuscany, Italy, which meant having to illustrate while on holiday, I found myself working in trains, in airports as well as planes. It was a fine balancing act of holiday and work. It was a challenge, I learned a lot from the experience, and it gave me a new sense of value for illustration and freelance, and the ability to be nomadic in a sense and being able to work from different locations, which is something I would enjoy doing more of in the future.

June 9, 2015

San Miguel 125th Anniversary Chalice Glass

The Marketing Store agency based in Central London, invited me a illustrate a limited edition, illustrated Chalice glass for San Miguel beer brand, to celebrate 125 years of the brand and draw attention to it’s rich and well travelled past. The Chalice will be available for consumers in bars all over London. Consumers spotted drinking from the Chalice will have the chance to win a selection of experience based prizes to create additional interest around the promotion. The launch of the Chalice will be supported with a digital media campaign with the Chalice as the hero. This will also act in informing consumers about the Prize promotion.

The brief was to produce a beautiful, illustrative, part chronologic, part geographic timeline taking consumers on a visual journey around their Chalice Highlighting key dates, places, events, quotes, inspirations and influences absorbed by San Miguel along its 125 year journey to present day.

The design has to be vibrant and bold bringing the story to life in flashes of colour evoking the adventurous spirit of the brand. Yet containing clusters of detail that could well be overlooked in a dimly lit busy bar at first glance. Allowing consumers to discover fragments of San Miguel’s influences for themselves at their own leisure. Areas of the design should reflect there geographic and or periodic roots (China, South Pacific 1950s) but still feel overtly Spanish, inline with the brands heritage.

May 29, 2015

Road Trip Maps Across America Redbook Magazine

The story is about road trips across America, illustrated maps for redbook magazine. The maps consisted of 5 different trip routes with 3-to-4 destination cities delineated along the way that will run slightly smaller than 1/4-page. These road trip routes were envisaged as being a little loose and fun, illustrations.

The hand lettering of each trip consisted of a “name” and then references to the name of each city stop along the way, because the maps were quite small, the detail had to minimal and yet impartial as well as usable for the reader. An example of trip criteria for example. #1: “The Early America” Boston, MA, Gloucester, MA, Portsmouth, NH, Boothbay Harbor, ME. Accompanying little drawings of main attractions or activities along the way that are specific to each city stop.

The story will also have small sidebars peppered throughout that required a few more individual drawings of things like a car, bicycle, road sign, iPhone etc for the magazine article, and each sidebar consisted of hand-lettered typography such as “The best car ride games”.

The brief was challenging, as the maps were a much smaller size then I am use to creating, this also made the brief interesting, as much of much of my work is very detailed, and to be able to use less detail and to focus on the important information and content of the map, made me think more about how I could illustrate future maps which are detailed, usable and illustrative pieces of work.

May 27, 2015

Shortlist Magazine Oxford St Map

Shortlist magazine the free circular for London, were interested in commissioning a map illustration for the up coming Oxford Street shopping feature. The artwork had to embody tropical summer theme that would fit around the already created digital approach by the agency organizing the Oxford Street shopping experience. The There are a large number of Participating brands, which consist of Mens, Women’s Cosmetic, and Food establishments. The large number of shops being features on the number would require some thought and organisations and the best approach to represent the many shops was by having a numbered key represented by a dot numbers of the rough location of where they would be located on Oxford Street.

The main element of the Shortlist magazine map is Oxford Street, and that’s Oxford Street would need to be the focus of the illustration. There are also other roads coming off Oxford street which are named, so that customers can use it to work out where along Oxford Street they are situated when looking at the map. It was an import feature to have the map be functional, and to be realistic in comparison

The 4 main tube stations included; Tottenham Court Road, Oxford Circus, Bond and Marble Arch also reinforce the approximate locations of there the stations exist on Oxford Street compared to reality. Two iconic Oxford Street Shops that are a main feature of the map, that had to be illustrated included Topshop, and Selfridges, The shops were illustrated around ‘London’ elements.

May 11, 2015

Town and Country Magazine

Town and Country magazine commissioned a map for their Bordeaux wine regions feature. With this particular map, the client required a hand drawn detailed map with intricate boarders which were required to hold the text information regarding the different wine producing regions of Bordeaux.

The map had a limited color pallet which I was instructed to take into consideration, the art director gave direction to create a red wine stain shape in this aesthetic, which was a interesting to execute, It required playing with ink colours, to recreate a wine stain shape. The rest of the Colour Pallet was black with reds/burgundy’s to allude to the color of wine.

The map also required specific icons to be illustrated for the map, these included, a compass, the Atlantic Ocean icon, Landes Forest icon, Cognac District icon. I created a few different iterations of these icons, in the end, the icons, which had detailed cross-hatching were the ones chosen for the map. The different wine regions within the wine stain were assigned numerical numbers from 1 to 20 and placed within the wine stain, which are easily identified from the break down of the information provided within the 2 information boxes, the left bank and the right bank boxes.

This particular map, I enjoyed creating and drawing, it’s a different from the maps I have created, and a challenge which was to retain a hand drawn look and feel, while at the same time creating a old feel of the map, which did not look to digital. In particular I think the boarder of the maps work well, they are both detailed and intricate.

March 10, 2015

Breaking Bad Map drawing

Breaking Bad the incredible and very successful TV programme has been off the air for over a year now. Here in the UK, you could only watch it on Netflix, the online streaming Platform. It was a hugely popular TV programme which I was a fan off, and it swanned many fan posters and drawings, which you can find on the internet. As you can see from above, I have now added to the fan drawings, although I conceptualised taking a different approach, of the usual portrait style, which can normally be found, as a Breaking Bad Map illustration.

It was a easy decision to create a breaking bad map, that showed the key locations of places frequently used in Breaking bad, as well as the important cars which were driven. that also characterised the personalities of the people of the breaking Bad TV programme. Using breaking bad Wiki it was a simple process to collect the information for the locations, as well as the type of cars which were driven in the programme. Walter Whites home residence interestingly is a fictional place, and does not exist in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Walter White BB address is 38 Negra Arroyd Lane, and the real life address is 3828 Piermont Dr NE Albuquerque, NM

The process involved, researching the individual locations and drawing them. Once all the key information was drawn, all the elements were digitally composed in photoshop, composing all of key location titles in bold hand drawn lettering, and the details of the cars and location address, in a loose hand drawn map.

January 22, 2015

Paris Detailed Map Drawing

Paris takes your breath away, Im lucky to have been a few times, and its pretty easy when you can take the Eurostar straight into Paris from London. I like the Charm and lifestyle of the city, many great sites, and its own laid back style of living. its fun to sit and people watch from the many cafes, where you can sit, drink a nice glass of wine or coffee. I enjoy sketching in a little sketch book and taking traveling notes as my way saving memories.

The Paris map drawing, is a map I wanted to create to capture the sites and sounds of memories I have had of paris, from the well known famous sites of the Eiffel Tower, Arc De Triomphe, Louvre Museum, Notre Dame Cathedral, Sacre Coeur Paris, The Ferris Wheel. I wrote some hand drawn notes with in the map to capture thoughts and and create some annotations of experiences.

The Paris Map is a diagram of thoughts, and maps a visual memory and diary, My intention was to draw a map which is practical, the street names are written in place. My personal interest in maps has grown considerably.