Maps Project

The website The Big Blue Swim wanted illustrators to design maps for their routes which are currently just depicted through google maps. Me and two of my friends decided to give it a go. We were ultimately unsuccessful at designing anything the website wanted to use but I'll write about the process anyway.

I decided I would draw the map in my usual way and then tweak it to their needs from there depending on what they say. I drew one map in fine liner pen then scanned it in and coloured it in photoshop before adding the route line and labels. I coloured the map relatively simply, a few shades of green for the land to give it a little three dimensionality with a bit of browny grey here and their to show changes in land style and white yellow for beeches, where appropriate. The sea I coloured a deep blue and then a lighter blue surf around the land. I thought the map looked very flat, sort of graphic designy so I added a slight old map parchment texture to the piece to make it interesting and bring the map alive, but still clear as to what was what.
After this I drew a map in ink and went through a similar process, this time making the colours a bit bolder and simpler as the suggestive nature of the ink isn't as clear or defines as my pen work.

I sent these pictures with a bit of writing about what I've done to the website. They replied that my line work needed to be a lot clearer, solid and more defined, they said the same about my two friend's maps as well but said mine was the furthest from what they were looking for. They also wanted simpler, clearer, bolder colouring. The colouring stuff was fine with me (though to be honest it seems a lot more boring) but I had already reigned in my sketchy line work a lot for the map drawing and while I could do more to get the style they want, because it's so against how I usually do work it would have took me a long time to draw the map and a lot of concentration and effort while doing so. It just didn't seem feasible for me to continue this project while also making all my work for my degree show.
It seemed like they wanted something very graphic design, and there's a reason I do illustration and not graphic design.