OUGD504 - Initial Digital Work

Initial Concept Digital Design Work

The overarching concept for the book is to use the beach and road lines within Dubai as a way of creating narrative and plotting the places throughout the book.

To create accurate drawings of the lines I looked for large scale maps from Dubai. Many of these were supplements in travel guides that broke Dubai down into smaller sections rather than the whole area. Looking at the larger travel maps that had a larger area covered it was found that many of them  used geometric simplified lines to represent the road and beach in particular. This was not useful as once the lines were drawn they were going to be simplified to look more like Arabic scripture, so an accurate version was needed. Google Maps satellite mode allowed for a birds eye view of the actual area, which showed all the intricacies of the landscape, particularly the beach.

Using Google maps screenshots of sections of the beach and road, then putting these side by side in Illustrator allowed line drawings of the whole of the necessary area to be documented.







From these initial line drawings I was able to use these shapes to mock up some initial ideas.

Taking inspiration from 'A Decade in Dubai' and its use of block colour alongside large imagery, the lines were used as a clipping mask with the images, then the rest of the space was filled with colour.

Merging both the line and imagery was quite striking for the beach line and was distinctive enough to plot points along, however when done at the bottom of the page for the road line it looked like a basic curve. This would not have enough detail to be able to plot points along for the different places. Having the whole section of the beachline across the top looked like a landscape, however was possible too obvious.

Enlarging a section further so the design would go over multiple pages, created a more abstracted section of the map. This abstracted approach created simple geometric shapes which looked both modern and elegant.

Using darker colours for the top and bottom background sections of the images was effective in creating contrast and framed the images well. Using the Eye Dropper Tool to select colours from within the images, complemented the photographs and created a more subtle look when compared with the black background examples. The colours also better reflected an aspect of the photograph which was more in keeping with each of the places. Using a colour that was closer to the top of the image, for the block colour created a more merged and cohesive look between the image and background, rather than a stark contrast.

Taking influence from designs from Natural Geographic it was considered how spreads could be created using full bleed images. The road line was not working effectively to create an interesting edge to the photographs in the previous experimentation, so it was considered how the road could be further represented.

It was thought that the shape of the road could be kept the same however there could be a strip of block colour at the top to make it stand out. The Sheikh Sayed Road is also known as 'The Strip' so placing the road of a strip of colour could be an appropriate link. Rather than just having the road as a singular line it was considered that it could be represented in a more graphic way.

Using basic lines to represent the lanes of a road, made more of a visual link to the road however still looked quite abstract which was effective. Making the road curved, as it is in real life however looked awkward, so it was considered perhaps straightening the road to run horizontally along the strip of block colour. Taking influence from Natural Geographic's large double spread imagery it was considered how a place could be represented across a spread. Using full bleed imagery was striking visually however when a border was placed around the images this framed the pictures better creating a more modern feel to the design. Placing text on dark coloured boxes as in Natural Geographic meant that the writing did not stand out as much and instead allowed the image to be the main focus.

Creating  a design that is mainly photographic with snippets of information allows the guide to be visually engaging when compared with conventional travel guides, that are very content heavy making it appropriate and understandable for families with children.

If the line for the road was to be less representational it was considered how the beach line could also be simplified to represent the beach through singular lines. Line experiments taking influence from shapes from sections of the beach could possibly be used as a way of making the beach and road lines have the same visual language.