Travel Guides -1 - Milan

The brief was to Produce 3 illustrations for a series of book jackets, at the size of existing travel guide, for 3 locations; Istanbul, Helsinki and Milan. The client wants a diagrammatic approach bringing together elements from each location. The typography must by hand drawn and reflect the location.

First I had to decide what I would take from the term Diagrammatic - it could mean that the composition was diagrammatic or the style was diagrammatic, it could use icons, maps, logos, simplified images, bar charts, flow charts, botanical drawings, or a combination of the above. I looked for other examples of diagrammatic illustrations and found that the range is incredible.  I particularly enjoy some of the ways that Dave McKean uses a diagrammatic approach in the Fat Duck Cookbook which I have looked at in previous exercises. Also Heather Gatley has used a diagrammatic approach in many of her illustrations. I also had a look at the Bayeaux Tapestry for inspiration, although this is more 'story-telling'.

I then created a spidergram for each of the cities and thought about colour and textures, modes of transport, as well as the tourist attractions for each location.

MILAN
I looked for a broad range of elements to incorporate within the cover illustration.
The 'tourist' highlights I identified were: Football; the two Milan teams, Shopping; fashion and labels, Culture; Leonardo Da Vinci, Duomo, Opera, Verdi, and Cafe Society, the Castello, Lake Como...

I had the idea of using the Vetruvian Man as a diagrammatic vehicle. The shapes around the Vetruvian Man have striking similarities with the ceiling of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuel, one of THE shopping and cafe society venues in Milan.

I think of Milan as being very 'sepia' so I thought that a sepia ink drawing would fit with the Vetruvian Man idea and be clear and diagrammatic.

I was pretty happy with the general idea of this thumbnail, so I transfered the image to a larger piece of paper and worked in sepia ink. I tried to simplfy the images right down to their most basic shapes so that the overall effect would not be too busy.

This was the initial sketch - I then scanned it and added flat colour in the computer. 

I quite like the hand written Great Cities which would be the series title, it needs to be quite simple so that it stands out but doesn't fight the individual city. It is supposed to give the feeling of a handwritten personal account of the city within the pages... but on reflection it might be a bit thin... might have to come back to this.