Pre-Work: Creating a hand-drawn map
For the pre-task of this activity, we had to create a hand-drawn map of our area/locality on an A3 size sheet of paper.
Before starting this map, I had no idea how this is going to be. I have been living in my locality since childhood. Initially, I was in a dilemma while thinking about the places and roads. I never gave it any thought. I had a rough idea.
Due to the intense detail of encompassing an entire area on a page, simplicity was definitely one of the approaches. Naturally, the colonies of the areas are jagged and irregular. I wanted to clean things therefore, I eliminated some of the streets. This was my first hooray for breaking down complex shapes into simplified forms.
Hand-drawn Map
Stage 1: Making a plan
Today, we had an intense discussion with our faculties. I realized that I used to make a repetitive mistake of first choosing the color and textures first rather than the theme. Instead, we have to decide the colors according to the emotion and feelings that we want to portray. Therefore, we can have a greater number of options to explore.
During the discussion, students also conveyed their opinions of other maps available online. For example: what kind of color they find most common among maps and the basic top view structure of a map seems ambiguous etc.
Keeping this in mind, I finalized that my final map to act as a piece of communication that helps inform people of the diversity in our locality, not just as eye candy. I wanted it to convey the vintage feeling, along with elegance, modernity, and professionalism. From building to shops, trees to forests, the final design should be something that inspires a visit to my locality.
Exploration of view
To do this, I started by tracing my hand-drawn map by using certain tools in Illustrator.
Keeping the theme in my mind, I have explored various views. While selecting the outlook, I wanted to make sure that my elements have enough amount of space and are clearly visible.
In the top view, the center rectangle seems to be the main focus of the map. Everything surrounding the center rectangle seemed ignored and compact. Therefore, I have selected Isometric View, in which the spatial relationship seemed appealing and adequate.
Isometric View
Experimentation of Elements
The next layer contains the experimentation of the most obvious landmarks in our locality. The landmarks are depicted in isometric view. The elements are illustrated on an isometric grid by using the pen tool.
It was easy to come up with the ideas but I struggled in making the elements look realistic and tangible. After trying out a few methods, I understood the importance of light and shadow. Subtly adding elements of light and shadow into the illustrations helped to bridge the gap, giving the 2D elements a more realistic, 3D appearance.
The next step of detail was added via secondary landmarks such as trees and cars. Having overlaps of these helped to add depth. It is important to group each object once completed so it could be scaled proportionately and placed easily afterward.
Elements pack
Since I wanted my map to look elegant I thought of brainstorming a few line qualities. A simple line with 2 points stroke weight represented the chosen theme the most.
Basic Line Drawing digitally
Stage 2: Color and Compose
According to the intended theme, I thought of some simple color palettes for the final outcome and created their swatches. I had to add and eliminate the colors at each step of the selection before I finalized the palette that best suits my intended vision/mood.
Process of finalizing the selected palette
This is the compilation of the 2-week journey I had with this map. Starting from a blank canvas till that finished map, I was so engrossed in the journey. There was so much to learn from my mistakes and failures. I could not imagine how I used to be so determined to show the exact representation of the map that I envisioned in my head. Everyday by working consistently I discovered so much about illustrator tools. It seems fitting to call the piece my locality due to the level of detail and sense of discovering something new each time I look at the work.
Feedback
After receiving the feedback, I was baffled because I endeavored to make this map flawless. I tried to record my journey as much as possible but uploading it presentable was a challenge that I was facing. I took some help from my peers to classify and organize the process perfectly.
Abstraction
In this activity, start with the line-drawing of the map but this time we had to replace the roads/ streets, blocks, parks, etc with basic visual elements such as dots, lines, shapes, as well as negative space.
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