City Postcards - First thoughts

City Postcards:

We are to produce 4 postcards that each represent a city and communicate something about it, also making them work as a matching set. They need to be produced on illustrator using vector shapes, and communicate purely through image with no text involved. The sizes will be 140mm x 210mm.

• I started by brainstorming icons and objects that could represent a spacific city. Clothing, Famous buildings, Trainers, Famous people, Hip-Hop artists, Animals, Hats, Masks...
• I kept in mind that it would need to be created in vectors so would be effective if the things could be communicated in simple shapes and iconic images.
• I thought about making an arrangement of famous buildings and faces from the cities. Like having architecture from Venice combined with Venetian masks. And having Brooklyn / New York with Hip-Hop artists faces and iconic buildings from New York arranged in a composition.

• I think this idea would successfully communicate the cities and show it character but I just don't think the design could work effectively in vector shapes with no outlines.
• Simple vector designs are more effective than complex ones and creating multiple buildings and faces on one postcard will be much to complex and hard to make look good with no outline.

• I had another thought to have each postcard as a distinctive scene from a city. One that captured the character well.
• I would make each postcard match by having them the same perspective street view and composition. 
• Cities that have a distinctive character and architecture could be Venice, Barcelona, Rome, Beijing...
• I also though about picking out a key piece of architecture from different cities and having it as a floating icon in the centre of the frame. 

• This idea feels to obvious and maybe to simplified. I can't imagine a set of postcard like this would look effective.

• I went back to the idea of Hip - Hop artists, its something I'm interested in and would enjoy working on. I like working with facial imagery also so I had the idea to make postcards that had just a single face on each.
• I though about making big bold close up faces, with bright contrasting colours - not actual skin tones. I think if I could make the shapes of the faces recognisable and then use abstract colours it could be really effective.
• I want them to look like the artists but still be stylistic.

• Now I needed to figure out what artists represent the cities well and are iconic to there cities. Would I go for classic hip hop artists like Biggie or look at modern up coming artists that are currently making music?

OBEY:

• This is cool design that has a bold face in vector shapes. I like the way it fills the page and has simplified facial features.
• I will look at making designs like this but maybe include more contained shapes. Also work with more colours and look at how they can balance across the face.
• I think I would have to make my designs slightly more detailed than this in order to make them recognisable as each artists.