Exercise: travel guides

The brief is to produce three illustrations for a series of book jackets, travel guide sized, for Helsinki, Istanbul and Milan.

This is not my cup of tea! I try to be positive and try, in the past I have always learnt a lot from projects that I would have avoided.  First I searched the internet. I did look in the library where Turkey barely exists unlike New Zealand and Australia! - not to mention there is nothing at all on Finland...  so the internet is great for me. I was looking for images of "things not to miss in ..." and maps. Maps are not great. In Istanbul, there are so many things to see, very close to each other on a map that my first thoughts for a diagrammatic way to put it all together were out straight away - or are they?

http://neuroself.com/2011/05/14/human-brain-mapping/

I found something that summs up my idea of 'diagrammatic', that could be useful here (?)

http://www.austinkleon.com/2008/02/13/in-defense-of-food-an-eaters-manifesto-by-michael-pollan/

I decided then to look at what the three cities would have in common that I could show visually. Two of them are by the see, one is landlocked. I therefore concluded that the style of the covers would have to unify the guides, with an idea of a map to add the required diagrammatic element, and featuring one perhaps two images showing a place of interest. I also almost always take too much time on each project, so for myself, I wanted to do this as quickly as possible.

Helsinki mood board, I'm so proud I can do this now, so easy for someone else maybe!

In the middle of the project I realised there was a quick way of putting together a mood board that I could use on pixlr. Helsinki has its own visual problems: the Sibellius monument/sculpture looks interesting and I would love to visit it, but visually from a distance I don't like it at all. The rock church is 90% underground and very big so it looks like 'a pile of rocks' from the outside, and small pictures really don't make it justice.  I think I can use better a picture like the one of a summer house (very popular things in Helsinki ) with northern lights.  Note to myself: I copied the medieval image found on the net when I was researching helsinki, but can't remember where it came from!

Coming back to this project: I had various ideas started and abandoned. Here is one of them which is more developed: