Giving Instructions

This exercise was about creating visual instructions:

I decided to take on the challenge of instruction to Get to My House and broke the journey down into several main parts:

1. Getting from Waterloo to Hampton Court (train)
2. Getting to Molesey from Hampton Court (bus)
3. Getting to our house (walk)

I turned to the sketchbook and had a play with finding icons to represent the different stages - the Clock at Waterloo seemed a simple idea and had the bonus of giving a time for a train - so more information imparted!! Then Hampton Court Palace is the best target to make sure you get the right train. Then the Tescos in Molesey is the bus stop, so that gave me another icon to work with.

I was torn between simplification and creating a bit of a story... then thought about who I was giving the instructions to: If it was a child - there would be more detail required - if an adult - less. I decided to do two different versions, one for  a ten 11 yearold on his first trip and the 2nd for an adult to read.

Child's Version:
I thought about creating a small booklet for the child, and set about trying to create an illustration for each step, adding a few along the way.

But then decided that for the purposes of the exercise a poster was better. Re reading the brief I took all the speech bubbles out and limited text to place names. However, I took out the final destination as a security measure for  posting on my blog.I worked back into the drawings in the sketchbook and finalised the child's version. And I gave him a dog as a travelling companion.

I then went for a simplified comic book style of drawing and tried to make the pictures flow on the page

I was struggling with details so I redrew and finalised the image onto A3

I found that I had to photograph or scan every image to get it into the computer in a state where I could add a nice flat printerly colour. I decided to limit the colours for greater clarity and impact. And here is the final version.

I am quite pleased with the clarity of the image - I like the limited palette, perhaps it is a bit too limited. But I do think that it would get a child from A to B although I would  have to put the street name on it!!

Adult Version.
I decided to go for the idea of blowing up icons on a map for this - so I took the convention of a magnifying glass and simple icons for each of the steps in the instructions, linking the magnifying glass by means of the mode of transport to each destination.

I refined and transfered the image onto fine textured  paper and used a very fine liner to create the outlines.

I used ink to add colour, although the bright red of the train and the bus hasn't scanned as bright red for some reason?

And finally added satellite imagery of Hampton Court as texture for a background

But the road was dissappearing, so I reduced the opacity and put a grain on the background.

The effect is a bit more subtle. I like the simplicity of this version. Again I would have to put a house number and the correct street name on if I were not putting this on the internet!