Exercise: Abstract Cities

Create a series of ten abstract designs in which you balance blocks of subordinate, dominant and accent colours. These designs are going to be used as covers for ten cities. As part of the process explore your DTP packages further by creating the artwork in different software packages.

I think it’s fair to say that compared to previous exercises I have made a complete meal of this one! I made a fatal mistake at the beginning, which was to do the maths – ten designs at four to five different iterations, that’s at least forty images! Oh, my that’s a lot of ideas and uploading. I think at this point I became a bit overwhelmed by the task and wasn’t sure how best to approach it. This triggered quite a lot of procrastination and longingly reading and re-reading the next exercise about Photomontage.

I collected the odd image and started thinking about how I was going to approach the exercise but the inspiration was slow in coming. Some of the cities I knew so had some initial connections and my own perception of colours and shapes. I did some wider research online to collect images of the different cities. This then prompted some initial sketches to start the process of thinking about composition, having decided I’d work on composition first and then work with colour. I was reasonably happy with some of the ideas but not wildly excited by them.

Six thumbnail monochrome sketches for travel guides

Panorama based sketches

Unusually for me I also then looked at other student’s work for this exercise. I wouldn’t ordinarily do this as I have found in the past it can be a bit intimidating when I see the quality of other peoples work. I am also mindful that sometimes you can take on subliminal ideas that may then appear unintentionally in your own work raising concerns about originality. With those caveats in mind and being as stuck as I was I thought it might help. It was certainly useful in seeing how others had approached the exercise, and especially helpful in looking at how others had assembled their palettes and the use of Adobe Color. I also noticed some motifs and images were used by a number of students and that these were very similar to the images I had found.

The next step was some quick research on other travel guides. The ones that stood out for me were the Louise Vuitton and the Luxe guides. It was particularly the Luxe guides that caught my eye, I really liked the idea of taking a small detail to represent the bigger concept. My first sketches, and other student work seemed to be more panoramic in nature and I wanted to focus in more.

: Marco Polo Guides

: Louis Vuitton Guides 2

: Luuis Vuitton Guides 1

: Luxe Guides

: Guruorange Guides

: Frommers Guides

: Eyewitness Guides

At this point I decided to refine the brief and think about them in terms of guides for art lovers in each city, which meant I could focus in on a particular theme. As I did the research this also helpfully showed that many of the arts buildings in these cities are quite iconic. Finally, I had a way in and something that interested me!

Abstract Cities – stage two

Having decided on the approach I wanted to take I set out some dedicated time to work on all ten cities together. I worked on them in batches rather than city-by-city, in part to think about consistency but also to keep the energy going.

I created what I have called a mood board for each city in which I brought together arts, architecture and public art examples.

: Mumbai

: Montreal

: Melbourne

: Marseille

: Marrakech

: Manhattan

: Manchester

: Managua

: Malmo

: Madrid

I put all the mood boards into Adobe Colour and used that to create a basic colour palette for each, based on their bright or custom themes. In some cases these were adapted further when I worked on the design. The Colour Palettes PDF shows the initial colour schemes.

I then started a new set of sketches to work on the compositions. These were developed in Illustrator.

: Abstract Cities thumbnails 1

: Abstract Cities thumbnails 2

: Abstract Cities thumbnails 3

Abstract Cities – Stage three

Madrid

Based on contemporary art in the city I tried to do the exterior of the Museo Nacional Centro de Art Reina Sofia but I was struggling with Illustrator and it started looking too fragmented. The second idea was based on a piece of public art but wile I like the idea it felt too derivative. I finished by using an aspect of the exterior of the Matadero, which I think captured the wider iconic arches in other parts of Madrid as well as the Spanish colours.

Managua

I had thought I would use some of the city’s public art but after more online research I found that several of them had been demolished. In the end I went with the iconic trees (although these seem to have mixed appeal in Managua itself!).

After learning how to make swirls in Ai I used Adobe sketch and transferred the result to Ai. I was struggling to make the colours work and was painstakingly using the pen tool to map areas and apply colour. In the end I used the trace function and decided to use a thick stroke to paint the curls. I was going to tidy the edges but decided I quite liked them a bit sketchy.

Marrakech

Based on the exterior of the Marrakech Museum for Photography and the Visual Arts. It was one of the earliest sketches and I was happy with the composition so concentrated on the colour combinations. I used variations from the colour palette, which were evocative of the city as a whole. In the last two versions I added the drop shadows under the windowsills but I didn’t feel they really added to the design. (I have just read the Museum has closed while it seeks a new location so would have to rework this for a guide now!).

Manhattan

This design uses the iconic interior of the Guggenheim museum. As with others I started with too much detail so after the two early attempts I decided to simplify it and make it more abstract. I didn’t like the all caps typeface and tried to find something that was stylish and cultured.

Malmo

These compositions are based on the exterior and interior of the Moderna Museet Malmo (MMM) and the Malmo Konsthall (MK). I kept the exterior ideas very simple and abstract. The all orange example is from the interior of the MMM and plays with some of the architectural features. The MK interior is very minimal reflecting the perspective in the gallery. The typeface is modern and simple.

Manchester

These designs are based on the exterior of the People’s History Museum and as with the other designs they incorporate colours from across the city. I was reasonably happy with the composition so worked on various colour palettes. The first two didn’t feel well balanced and the interaction of colours wasn’t working. I decided to use white for the background, which lifted the colours and made it more dynamic.

Mumbai

Initially, I thought I would use the exterior of the Bombay Arts Society but when I started working with the shapes it wasn’t coming together. Instead I used the interior staircase design that is very distinctive. Once I had got the basic layout I worked with different palettes until the final version, which I felt was the most harmonious. Again I chose a typeface that felt in keeping with the destination.

Marseille

This started with the night view of the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations (MuCEM) but it looked too busy and fussy so I moved on to the aerial view and created something much simpler. The colours draw on the wider palette of the city and are not specific to the centre. I added some texture in the final version to evoke the amazing external structure of the building. I kept the typeface clear and modern.

Melbourne

My initial ideas were to use the distinctive façade of the Australia Centre for Contemporary Art and while I liked these I thought perhaps they were a little too abstract. The second set of ideas take public art in Melbourne as their starting point. The colours are reasonably close to the original works but also encompass the sunshine, red earth, and blue skies.

Montreal

This is the iconic façade of the DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art. The original building only has one red window but this has been extended to three in the final version to reflect the presence and importance of the colour red in the city. The overall palette was kept relatively muted to reflect the city’s architecture.

Final selection

Having done the original sketches and then working up the designs in Ai I selected the final ten which I felt were probably the most successful. Some are more successful than others but I think there is some sense of them working together as a series.