Abstract City Guides I used a combination of my growing skills in Photoshop and Illustrator to create the images in the following pages. All photographic images are referenced at the end of the document. I note here that I have a new computer monitor but because it’s not calibrated for colour, I cannot guarantee that the colours I see are similar to the ones you experience when viewing my work.
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Mood boards and research Because of the varied content in this task I rejected the standard concept of a mood board as the cultures, national identities and traits in the cities are as diverse as the people within them, and the history that they embody. There is no standard feature tying these urban areas together, other than that they house millions of people. This makes the concept of the mood board, for me, difficult to apply. If I was creating a range of furniture or fashions I could use a mood board to collect ideas for colours, textures or designs, but with such a wide-ranging range of subjects in the ten cities, and with the brief being to capture some element of the essence of the city a collection of themed images seemed inappropriate. Instead of creating a mood board by preparation focused on exploring the design of travel guide covers and in investigating abstract graphic design style which may be useful in this task. I also defined my methodology for producing the graphics but note that it naturally evolves as this task progresses. This work is included in the attached documentation.
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Managua I researched Managua and chose a panoramic image which I felt, from my armchair, captured this city. The colours I wanted to illustrate were the greenery of the natural environment, which extends into the centre of city, the sky and ocean-side location.
To help me identify the colours I planned to use I sampled the photograph and analysed the key components. As expected, blues, greys and green dominate. There is low contrast in the image photograph and the colour palette has no major dominant colour and all the major colours are a dark shade.
Man-made structures generally fell into a brown/beige colour palette and do not feature majorly in the photograph I chose. I opted for bold purples as the accent colour, specifically for the typeface, and note that they also sit comfortably next to blue, which is partnered by green on the other side of the colour wheel.
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I created the abstract image using very large elements of greens for foliage with a base colour of a lighter green to represent the lushness of the natural environment. I felt that the complex image didn’t need high resolution detail to show the combination of lush vegetation and brilliant sky and water - simple rectangular shapes would be enough.
I used two darker shades of green in the foreground, and being subordinate to the brighter tone, they don’t dominate visually, even though they are a large fraction of the overall image area. Bands of blue obviously symbolised the ocean and sky, with lighter blue chosen to the water to provide more contrast with adjoining blocks. I avoided trying to represent the manmade structures as they were scattered and small and they seemed relatively irrelevant in terms of their contribution to the elements of the image.
There is no obvious architectural splendour in Managua at this distance from the city, so trying to represent structures in an abstract way was not important. Would I change this design? Yes, it was my first abstract and in hindsight the colours are too muted and need to come up a tone. In this revision, I have used the image retouching function in MS Word to brighten the colours. What’s noticeable now is that the contrast between the light green and dark green is much greater, and this has made the darker tone more dominant, and to me changes the whole composition, purely through the visual impact of colour blocks.
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This version uses a 40% contrast reduction, apparently. And it definitely reduces the domination of the large green block. This is undoubtedly abstract, and a basic composition that would be worth exploring. However, I felt that without knowing Managua I didn’t have a feel for its story and own image, so trying to capture it in blocks of colour felt culturally insensitive and slightly awkward.
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Mumbai Mumbai is a far larger city than Managua, so it was obvious that I’d be using colour to represent the buildings and structures, in contrast to the previous city. I wanted to carry the vibrance of India into the final design
Internet searches for Mumbai threw up the usual monumental structures but I noticed this photograph in the results.
I love the colours of the washing in the foreground in particular. However, slums are definitely off the tourist route so I decided that my composition would use these bold colours for contrast and as accents but with the dominant tones taken from this more recognisably tourist image.
Clearly blues provide dominate with the water in the foreground a subordinate blue tint compared to a bold sky. Aside from some stone and foliage tones, which can both be gently subordinate to the blue, the accents come popping out in the stunning colours of the boats.
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At this point in this task I was still emulating the examples shown in the course notes, so restricted the abstract shapes to rectangles.
The dominant hue is blue, with a lighter tone used for water and a darker shade for the abstract boats.
I chose a blue green for the large block of vegetation which runs horizontally across image as a subordinate colour, with the small blocks of green also tending towards a blue tint and avoiding the more vivid yellow greens. Red and yellow accent colours work as a triad with the blue, and I used shades from the bold primary versions of these to avoid distraction. The yellowy orange of the foreground buildings is subtle as I deliberately chose muted tones, both to avoid contrast with the blue and because they are large blocks of colour and risk dominating if they’re too prominent. A grey with a hint of blue adds a suggestion of the big city and I used the classic blue-yellow contrast on the text, with a visual suggestion that it is playing the role of the Sun. There’s a pleasing naive simplicity to the image, and when viewed from a distance it’s purely the contrast of yellow on blue which stands out – the remainder of the image seems to sit together comfortably, in terms of colour and composition.
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Montreal Americans like to say that Canada is boring. At first glance Montreal is just another sprawling modern city with a rather generic skyline. But its old town with cobbled stone streets had some appeal. I chose this image for my inspiration.
I liked the perspective and the contrast between the greys of the stone and the brightness of the occasional street decoration. These reminded me of the Canadian flag
I chose to represent the street scene in a grey stony palette and bring in a single block of red – a colour that most visitors to the country will instantly recognise. Contrast is provided by a scale of shades of grey, stepped into the distance to add perspective in the abstract image. I used colour sparingly in this image, with a grey hint to the pale blue sky and to the green foreground. I avoided small details, such as windows, because with 10 images to do in this task that would be a poor use of my time. Seriously, you should set tasks that give us a chance to experiment within realistic time constraints‌ I applied vertical text, with both the red of the flag and also with white for sharper contrast
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I like the simplicity of this image but to meet your design brief added, against my judgement, some smaller elements
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I applied the subtle shifts in shade here to give the effect of windows. The foreground blocks represent a couple out for a stroll. I dislike the small blocks because they are trying too hard to be details but tried to emulate the style shown in the student notes. Clearly greys dominate, and the red is a bold accent, with this also picked up discretely in the foreground abstract figure.
In hindsight I would like to add more of a grey tint to the greeny street, and almost push for an achromatic look with just the single red block for colour interest.
As you can tell, I was not majorly inspired by Canada, so maybe the Americans are on to something?
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Melbourne From my research I chose this wide view of the city because of its wide perspective and rich colour tones.
The photograph gives the impression of a modern skyscraper CBD with a leafy suburban surround. Being Australia, sunshine needs to be emphasised. I saw interesting colours in the glass-fronted buildings, which reflected the blues of the sky. Tinted glass had an interesting purple hue. This was an attractive alternative to concrete and steel colours and these provided a natural palette in the range from blue to purple.
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I wanted to experiment with the text a little more, so turned it around to blend with the tower blocks and reduced the saturation overall, to reduce the distraction of the slightly gaudy colours. This design was imbalanced. The green foreground was not subordinate to the blue base colour and although I liked the playfulness of the large sun and huge text, it needed work.
So, in this image I turned made a hint of blue to the green, to bring it towards the dominant colours. But I still was unhappy with elements: I wanted the text to be discrete and not look like a cloud metaphor.
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The two images above were the outcome of this edit, with the most major structural change being the movement of the text down to the bottom green band. This gives an opulent large blue sky, filling over three quarters of the design.
Wanting to experiment more I played with hue controls and moved the skyscraper blues more into the greens, whilst leaving the background unchanged. This makes green a more prominent subordinate colour and I believe makes the overall composition more lively.
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I felt that the blue base colour and its high profile in the image limited the colour experiments which could be achieved. I could only use subordinate colours, ie purples or green-blues, for the buildings. I felt that adding bold accents to the skyscrapers would distract too much. So, for my final experiment I went grey on the buildings and ‘grass’
So, this gave a grey foreground with tonal range within it – could have been much greater but I could not dedicate the time to this. I made the text a lighter tone of blue and felt that the contrast with the band of dark grey worked well. Do I like this? No, it looks like a badly made Stonehenge, but with work, this has potential I felt.
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Malmo
The Turning Torso structure dominates modern Malmo and really caught my eye. I was drawn into its mixture of curves and rectangular grid of windows.
Although I thought Malmo was attractive, expressing its identity in an abstract way which was distinctive was challenging. The Turning Torso therefore became my focal image. I viewed a range of photographs of the tower. I explored using a funky low angle image, which I converted to monochrome to help me identify the shapes which define this very individual building. I pushed the image off to the right of the frame, with the idea of using the black squares as the abstract elements in the finished product.
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However, I could see a lot of image editing being required to extract enough shapes to clearly identify this as the Turning Torso. I will return to this at some point, I am sure, because it’s a very individual and visually appealing structure Finally, I chose this one close up of the lower sections of the tower
There are lots of shades of grey in this and a rather saturated sky, but other than that no colours which I felt merited being included in a colour palette.
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But then in a flash of inspiration I decided to run with the Swedish national colours
At this point I cropped the structure in to the A5 frame and positioned it to show the curving window fronts, turning to monochrome to make the image as simple as possible. I decided that remaining with rectangular shapes was too constricting and would not allow me to explore abstract colours comfortably if I was constrained to MS Paint graphics. So, this is my monochrome starting point from the windows of the building.
I removed the triangle in the top left, because it’s function would not be obvious in my image, and applied the Swedish flag colours to the windows
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The focus of this task is shape and colour, and whilst I could have used a shade of green to continue the colour palette journey from blue to yellow I decided that the image’s simplicity didn’t warrant an additional colour. So instead I graded the yellows and blues of the flag from left to right, creating a gentle progression in colour density.
This provides more visual interest and adds an element of depth through an implied variation in lighting. I’m delighted with this image. It bonds architectural elements from an iconic building in the city with the national colour identiy all within an abstract context. The natural constrast between blue and yellow is exploited throughout the image, but using lighter shades from left to right never triggers any high and unpleasant contrast. For the typography I chose a simple, blocky sans font and applied it white to give a cut-out effect. Sweden is known for its elegant and minimalist designs and I feel that this image lives up to this standard. I did not want to misappropriate some iconic Swedish symbolism, because using a national flag in a design for a
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wide audience is not something to be done lightly. But I would hope that any Swedes seeing this proposed book cover would not feel insulted and would not only instantly recognise their national colours, and their presentation in the flag, but would also see that it’s been placed carefully in to a symbol of modern architectural achievement. I’m very satisfied with it.
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Marseilles I’m more familiar with Margate than Marseilles, so struggled to find an image which I felt captured a well-known feature of the city. But after some online exploring I settled on
Clearly greens, blues, terracotas and stony tones dominate. I ran this through canva.com’s very handy colour recognition software, which identifies the key colours by area.
I noticed that it missed off the greens, which it averaged in to the greeny-grey. This looks like the beginning of triad of colours? I put the colours in to paletton.com and adjusted the base colour for a triad. Using Brick Red generated this suggestion
The suggested palette on the right are hues within the three triad colours and look perfect for Marseilles. The base colour would be a blue.
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So now I was feeling empowered to use non-rectangular shapes I could unleash a little more creativity, and some elements of abstract realism.
I started by adding the blue base colour as a background layer, then drew on polygons to represent the key features in the image. I used a screenshot of the palette above to directly select the colours from the scheme.
Whilst the greens sit comfortably with the blues in a subordinate role, the terracotta polygon is remarkably bold and contrasty. I noticed this juxtaposition early on in the drawing stage, but because I was aiming for abstract decided that it should stay.
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To complete the image I closed the gaps between polyongs and added a 20px white stroke at beach level to give the effect of waves on the shore.
The final product was a very abstract representation of the photograph
I liked this, and enjoyed the playful bumping of colours. But I eventually gave in to my perfectionist side and edited it to create this‌
Reducing the colour saturation in the greens brings them in to line with the dominant blue tones, whilst leaving the terracotta to accent. I experimented with the text location but this didn’t really work, in hindsight.
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So this my final design. I push the graphic elements upwards and introduced a grey-blue bar across the bottom of the image to hold the text. I placed the text on the right hand side to help balance the image, which is very left dominant.
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Manchester Manchester presents a rich variety of iconic buildings and locations, so the research phase of this task was fun but frustrating. Eventually I opted for the immense and slightly oppressive Gothic-style City Council building. Its Victorian mega-engineering towers over passers-by and whilst not as wellknown or as bright and colourful as many of the modern structures in the city I feel that it represents the powerhouse of industry and development which made Manchester what it is now.
The image I chose has a colour palette of the local stones with an uncharacteristicaly blue sky! In the photograph there are accent colours from the lighting inside the building, but I opted to ignore that level of detail, which seems irrelavent in a guide book cover. I wanted the polygons for my abstract image to be simple and bold, avoiding detail. The colour scheme was based on samples taken from the photograph with initially 5 tones sufficient to represent the walls and roof.
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The reddy-browns dominate, and by using a tone of ‘sky blue’ which is equal in tone to the foreground there are no huge differences in contrast.
But the image was too literally a simple representation of the building, so I made a few changes at this stage: firstly I rotated the building away from the horizontal to give create a more dynamic perspective. After a break from this image I decided to explode the blocks of colour and move them apart. This revealed the base colour and definitely looked far more abstract.
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But I wanted also to acknowledge the world-famous red colour associated with the Manchester’s football heritage. I experimented with adding this to the text, but it felt too obvious? So instead I introduced it as a parallel band of colour behind the building, choosing a tone of red which harmonised well with the red and purple tones in the stone colours.
To finish the image I added a white stroke to the text, to add emphasis. This simple effect inadvertantly brings a visual resonance with classic British rail travel tourism posters, which for me at least creates a warm and familiar feel to the product.
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Manhattan I felt that Manhattan is visually cliched. There are so many iconic buildings and features in New York that it’s well trodden territory. So I decided to go off the beaten track for my cover design. I found an image of a park with a view of the cityscape behind which I felt was definitely not a standard tourist perspective.
There’s clearly a potential for a palette of greens, blues and reddy-browns for the background structures. As I was creating the image I felt that I didn’t want to colour individual buildings, to avoid too much literal representation.
The image above was an intermediate stage in the project. I had planned, like Manchester, to disturb the elements and move them around in to a montage of random but recognisable shapes. But at this point I recalled that the cover design is for a book cover and I imagined that the brief my include less popular areas of the city. That inspired me to do the following…
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I also looked briefly at using abstract shapes for the buildings, but decided that unless the shapes were instantly recognisable they look a little too generic to represent this particular city.
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I’m pleased with the minimal use of colour and shape in this image. The colour palette is very simple and puts the focus on to the natural elements of the cover content, and if this is the focus of the travel guide it would be a theme worth exploring further.
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Madrid Just like Manhattan, there are a wealth of very well known and photographed features in Madrid. I wanted to get off in to the backstreets and find another side to the city. Some reseach took me to the Lavapies district, with its cobbled streets and quirky individual structures. I could see blocks of colour and abstract shapes instantly in this photograph
The colour palette is entirely obvious at first glance. I explored adding detail to create abstract representation of the balconies and windows but I was unhappy with effect because it interfered with the vertical alignment of the buildings.
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I eventually realised that there are two vanish points in the image, with the road rolling away out view and guiding the eye as I showed by the white arrows above. The blue arrows show how the buildings are diminishing towards a vanishing plain which is appears to be at the point where the road curves out of view. And I think that’s why the concept of trying to add abstract lines and shapes for the balconies or horizontal elements simply doesn’t work in this picture. The only way I could imagine covering this issue would be to play with curves, to force the eye to bend around the corner, in a way. But that’s for another day.
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The finshed product is very abstract, as shown below
I used grey for the base colour, because I want to avoid introducing a cliched blue for the sky. White didn’t work, and left the vertical bands hanging from emptiness, and lighter greys were too confusing because of the use of two greys tones to represent the road and footpaths. I explored placing the text in the upper band, but it looked lonely. Using a hard light effect on the text gave it a subtle variation in colour across the image, which mirrored the changes in tone and hue in the vertical bands and provided a fun accent. I’m very pleased with the final effect and consider this a concept worth exploring in more detail when time allows.
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Marrakech Finally, the visual feast that is Morroco… This is a city of extraordinary beauty and great visual complexity. The bazaars always appeal to visitors, so I spent research time investigating images of these to identify the key features which lend themselves to both representing the markets and to also being distinctly Marrakech. It became apparent that the diversity and boldness of colours is both visually (over?) stimulating and uniquely a feature of the bazaar scene. It wasn’t obvious initially how to overcome this hurdle because I wanted abstract but without swamping the image with small, medium and large scale colours which are too abstract and don’t represent the essence of the market. I explored my problem in this sequence
I took a typical street scene, reduced the colour palette, blurred the image to simplify the colours even more, then ran it through a posterisation filter. The final image in the sequence is no longer recognisable as a market, and although it’s impressively abstract it’s only a market if viewed with prior knowledge and a bit of squinting.
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So I abandoned the approach if using an explosion of abstract colour to represent Marrakech because I felt that I’d entered the realms of super-abstract art. I also wanted to represent the culture of Morocco in a flattering way, and not apply either a crass generalisation of it nor generate design elements which were too Western in approach and failed to acknowledge north African influences. I felt, to be honest, that it would be wrong to attempt the intricate geometric patterns in a way that might look either childlike or offensively wrong. Instead I searched for a differening type of market image and immediately knew that this would work:
The palette is browns with a red hue, but of course it’s the shafts of light which create a visual identity that captures the bazaar’s esscence (quite literally!). So for my starting point I captured the basic shapes of this photograph and applied a limited colour palette, but was unhappy with the grey of the floor, which wasn’t a tone in the warm colour range I wanted.
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I was still frustrated with not being able to capture the visual onslaught that is the range of colourful range of products on offer. I considered working this in to the left hand wall in the image but it risked becoming a bizarre (pun intended) mosaic, and I loved the simplicity of the right hand side. So for my final image I moved the whole content to the left, removing the wall entirely and focusing on the light rays.
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I couldn’t decide upon the colour pallete to use so opted for presenting a range of options
These final designs show range of contrast and with only three colours in the image give ample scope for experimentation. I love the oppuluence of white space and in this image feel as if I’ve used it effectively.
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Reflections In these 10 cover illustrations I explored contrasts and colour resonance. I already have some experience of instinctively knowing when combinations of colours work together, but I spend more time here exploring shades and tones, not just in one colour but in other colours across the image. As I discovered in the design for Marseilles, it’s sometimes fun to create an accidental accent colour purely through tonal variations but it can also be very visually distracting. I felt as if the typography took second place to creation and colouring but am generally pleased with my text placement and colour choices. I found the use of colour wheels and palette extremely helpful at times, as having a swatch of tones allowed me to control subtle effects in the overall colour scheme and impact. This task also highlighted the value of first hand or deep experience of any subject which you illustrate in a creative way. Filtering thousands of photographs of cities, which I only know by name, looking for inspirational or iconic views or features is extremely challenging. This process leads me to applying my own cultural and personal biases to the creative flow, which is clearly not always helpful. As I mentioned in this document there were also times when I was aware that there is an opportunity to imprint European perspectives on representations of other cultures and that’s definitely an area that requires some careful exploration at all stages of the design process.
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References
Managua wide view https://nearshoreamericas.com/nicaragua-unique-bpo-market/ Mumbai shanty town https://cdn.britannica.com/s:700x500/98/189798-050127BC97E/Dhobi-Ghat-laundromat-India-Mumbai.jpg Mumbai river bank https://cdn.britannica.com/s:700x500/26/84526-05045452C37/Gateway-monument-India-entrance-Mumbai-Harbour-coast.jpg Montreal https://img.theculturetrip.com/1024x574/smart/wpcontent/uploads/2018/01/14970593072_a375d87db8_k.jpg Melbourne https://www.topuniversities.com/where-to-study/oceania/australia/findingyour-feet-melbourne-guide-citys-suburbs Marseilles https://www.thetravel.com/marseilles-france-your-essential-weekenditinerary-tourist-guide/ Malmo https://inhabitat.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2011/07/Calatrava-TwistedAnd-Sustainable-Turning-Torso-Malmo-3.jpg Malmo tower close up https://calatrava.com/projects/turning-torso-malmoe.html?
view_mode=gallery&image=7
Manchester https://www.100resilientcities.org/wpcontent/uploads/2017/06/GreaterManchester.jpg Manhattan https://media.nbcnewyork.com/2019/09/central-park-generic-1.jpg? resize=850%2C478 Madrid https://inhispania.com/blogs/tipsfrommadrid/wpcontent/uploads/2017/03/lavapies.jpg Marrakech https://www.getyourguide.com/activity/marrakech-l208/marrakech-privatewalking-tour-t67739?utm_force=0
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