Developing the TFL icons

I also developed the second concept I had for the TFL logo by turning it into different symbols for tourist attractions. I tried to stay true to the original logo as it is a very well-known and historical piece of design but used it as a basis to create other illustrations. I went for a simplified style and employed a bit of artistic licence when recreating the monuments to give a playful stylized feel to the images.

I felt these turned out really well and had an almost abstract style that was clearly based on the TFL logo but also was recognisable as a famous London landmark. However some worked better than others and those that were less recognisable or just didn't work visually will probably not be used in the finals. I will select 3 or 4 of the strongest illustrations and incorporate them into the poster designs.

Digitally Illustrating from Sketch

To start turning my sketch into a digital illustration I first used a fine liner pen and thickened out all the important lines in the picture in order to create a sharper solid image that the computer could use to create digital outlines. The scanner would also pick up on darker tones better than lighter pencil sketch marks.

The image was scanned in and then using Photoshop I used a combination of the magic wand and threshold tool to seperate the black outlines from the white background, creating a hollowed out image that could be digitially coloured underneath. I also played around with the levels in order to make the image a little bit crisper - e.g.- contrast levels.

Some parts of the illustration I thought were badly drawn so I redrew several buildings and re-scanned the image. Using Photoshop I was able to erase the old drawings and replace them with the updated parts using a combination of the eraser tool and threshold tool that I'd used before. As the new parts were the same style and size it was easy to incorporate them into the overall design using a few Photoshop tools.

Colouring the image was done manually using the paint brush tool in Photoshop. Each object in the illustration was coloured on a seperate layer, which when presented together gives the effect the colour is filled into the black outlines. To maintain the hand-drawn look of the illustration I was going for I painted using a brush at about 70-80% hardness and left in little imperfections which mimicked the hand-drawn style of the lines. So in some areas the colour goes over the line or doesn't quit fill up, or colours overlap. Again, I wanted the illustration to have a more playful personal feel about it, like a world imagined inside someones head.

I also used the eraser tool to clean up some of the areas that had rough pencil marks obscuring the colour. This was allow me to colour more effectively but these pencil marks would be included at a later stage.

For the final touch I duplicated the original outlines, increased the sharpness by adjusting the threshold settings (so that more pencil lines from the scanned image came through) and overlaid that back onto the fully rendered illustration. This thickened out some of the outlines even more and brought back some of the finer details (e.g. - the river waves) that were lost during the clean up. I felt these pencil lines added a bit more charm to the image and overall made for a really aesthetically pleasing illustration.

Developing the TFL sketch

Further development of the TFL sketch. This one has been designed to depict the interlinking networks of London and also how they lead you to different tourist attractions such as Big Ben and the London Eye. This could make the illustration more effective in terms of advertising London as a connected city that can take you to different interesting places.

Expanding on the TFL idea

A series of sketches playing with the idea of manipulating the TFL logo in order to express different things about it. I like the idea of creating the logo using illustrations of familiar transport systems such as the tube, train and london buses. I also want to incorporate the Thames into the illustration as this is also being used by TFL now.

The second concept I had was to personify the TFL logo to express a more personal link with people in London. For example, manipulating the shape so that it resembles a man smiling or creating little caricatures of people working in London to imply a sense community through the way TFL links up London.

I'm actually really pleased with how the sketches turned out, I think they have a lot of potential and would be applicable to the real world in the form of some kind of advertising campaign. I will probably digitally illustrate them based off of the sketches but I might want to retain the playful style and comic like outlines to keep the design looking friendly and hand-crafted.

I came up with the tagline "CONNECTING LONDON" for these illustrations that could be featured in the posters. For the Olympics variation it could say something like "Connecting London 2012" for example.

Classic TFL Posters

I thought it would be a good idea to look at previous poster designs for London transport such as these two that were designed in the early 20th century. Both use the symbol of the underground in order to create a dynamic image that says something about the company. For example the left poster personifies the logo in order to create a playful character that advertises the price of a ticket whilst the poster on the right uses the circular shape of the logo to create a dynamic swoosh design that advertises the speed and frequency of the service.

Stephen Waterhouse

A poster created by illustrator Stephen Waterhouse advertising the London underground. I thought his digital illustration style to be quite interesting as if differs from the hand-drawn pieces I looked at earlier. Again very colourful and vibrant with a playful take on the underground logo.

Emma Rios - "Map of London"

Maps of London created by Emma Rios showing a quirky hand-drawn style displaying the key landmarks of London and the bridges over the Thames. I also noticed this piece is very simplified, only picking out the objects on the map whilst leaving the rest of the space white. I really like her style, it has a sort of vintage feel about it, evident in the way she designed the type used for the bridge labels, and it communicates a very personal look at London I think. Little details such as the bowler hat and the umbrella floating above the header give the illustration a playful feel which I think works well.

Katherine Baxter - London illustrations

Katherine Baxter is an illustrator at the Folio Agency. She is best known for her detailed illustrations of London aerial views. I thought this would be interesting to look at as it can give me ideas about how to create simple drawings of London landmarks and icons that can be put together in a map. Some of my illustrations will function in a similar way. I really like how colourful here work is, I think this is important if I want to create a playful welcoming illustration advertising London. Her pieces have a vibrant and upbeat feel that I would like mine to display.

New Idea: TFL Logo

This is an idea I had after walking around London recently. I noticed that London is full of many iconic things that are very everyday for most people who live and work in the city. The Transport for London logo is probably one of the most recognisable symbols in London and it's literally everywhere: On buses, tube stations, posters, cabs, bus stops, roads, signage, maps and everywhere that is associated with London transport. So I thought that I could use this as a basis for making the everyday extraordinary.

I'm interested in expressing how intwined with London the logo is as it's been used almost a century now. Perhaps somethings that shows how transport connects London and Londoners.

Using Pen with Illustrations

I started developing the living machines idea I had based on my initial sketches. I began by doing an observational drawing of a kettle, then simplifying that drawing into a silhouette and finally recreating the image with pen to give a more solid sharper look. I found the use of pen to be good for creating more defined drawings but not so good at maintaining detail. However this could probably be solved by using a finer lined pen. The sharp contrasts between black and white remind me of the illustrations for Judge Dredd comics I looked at in my research.

This is another development of an initial sketch. Whilst I had fun creating this skeleton of a lorry I found that creating a pose was difficult as a lorry doesn't move that way and is actually much more rigid, adding limitations to the creative side of this idea. The problem becomes apparent when the silhouette,  that is supposed to be recognisable as the original object, becomes too obscure or not like the real thing. This may cause problems in developing this idea.

Human Anatomy Illustrations and Diagrams

For my concept I want to be able to imagine living functions going on inside inanimate objects. I'm currently looking at images of human biology and seeing what types of diagrams I could recreate and how they're usually illustrated.

 I like the idea of designing one based on old biology diagrams like this one. Even though this image that was made in 1872 wasn't meant to be a work of art I do like the style. I like the subtle brown tinted colours and the general vintage look of the image. Cross sections are something I could recreate.

I'm quite interested in this style of illustration. I like the simple design and the thick black outlines. I think it's important to have the silhouette of the object so that the viewer knows what the insides I've imagined are based off of. I'm very interested in creating something using black and white illustration, as I like the contrast between the black and white areas, I think it makes for a really eye-catching image. However some I may choose to do in colour.

A series of illustrated human organs. This has given me ideas about how I could simplify something as complicated a human heart into a more stylized illustration. These have quite thick strokes which again is something I'm interested in using.

Experimenting with digital colouring

This is an experiment I did to test out ways of transferring hand-drawn images into digital form. The image was imported into Illustrator and using the 'live trace' tool I was able to make a digitalized version of the image that could be manipulated as a vector graphic. I found this tool to be really useful and even without tweaking with the settings the result is sharp and stylized. I think that if I drew something and made sure the lines were sharp and solid (instead of sketchy) this tool could recreate a hand-drawn image really well.

The colour was added by a combination of filling white areas that had been converted into shapes and drawing shaded areas with the pen tool that were just filled and set behind the black outline.

Driven to Draw Exhibit

I went to see the 'Driven to Draw' exhibit at the Royal Academy in London for some more research on my illustration project. I found some really good examples of black and white illustration there. Alot of them were illustrations artists had done as a way of developing ideas for sculpture and painting, whilst still being really good pieces in their own right. For example Gilbert Ledward's study for 'The Guard' memorial shows use of depth using ink and block areas of black to create shadow and lighting. This was early work for a sculpting project he was creating.

John Maine's "Misra Yanta" was a really striking piece, made using crayon, it showed a really interesting use of texture on a 2D illustration and great use of tone through using varying shades of grey. The image also appeared really sharp and added to the sense of depth and dimension. I imagine the artist masked over some areas or used a rule as this was really sharp for a piece created in crayon. The overall image was really bold and visually interesting.

Visiting the Illustration Cupboard

For this project I visited the Illustration Cupboard in Central London to see some examples of different kinds of illustration used in books comics and TV. I've listed some of the pieces/illustrators I found most interesting and why:

Brian Cosgrove and Danger Mouse
During the visit I saw some original cels from the cartoon 'Danger Mouse' illustrated by Brian Cosgrove. What I found interesting about these illustrations is the fact the background was created in pencil and then the characters were created with what looked like ink on a transparent sheet that was placed over the top to create the effect that the characters were in the location.


I thought the differences in rendering style being combined into one shot was interesting as it's something I hadn't really thought about for my project. I also never thought about combining several different illustrations into one final piece. These could be really useful techniques when developing my ideas as a way of enhancing the finished illustration.

Kevin O'Niell and Judge Dredd
One of the things I'm really interested in is black and white illustration and I found these comic strips by Kevin O'Niell particularly interesting. I really love the way he uses the contrast of black and white to add a dramatic sharp appearence to his work without the need for colour or even other tones of grey. Like many black and white comic book illustrations he uses black to add depth to characters and objects or to create dramatic lighting effects. I also noticed that to create varying tones he uses dashed lines, hatches or other patterns to acheive this effect. I think this kind of block colour illustation might be suitable for some of the ideas I have in my head. One of which will most likely include some silhouette drawings and outlines so I've found this style to be quite inspiring. These illustrations were all done in black ink.

John Lawrence and Treasure Island
These wood engravings by John Lawrence for the Treasure Island books I found to be quite interesting. I like the bold black outlines and minimal use of colour to highlight certain characters and objects. It seems to achieve this overall high contrast flat style of illustration which I quite like but also looks very complicated and precise as some of the images show. In terms of materials I'm looking more towards pencil, pen and ink and digital at the moment.

Georges Remi and Tin Tin
I noticed this illustration in the brochure after the visit. I like the simplicity of it. The thick outlines and the block colours used to colour Tin Tin's coat and shoes. I like how this illustration features a varying stroke weight around Tiin Tin and his dog, I think it gives the piece a nice stylized look.

"Living Machines" Idea

I often see illustrations of living things with mechanical parts imagined inside them. Steampunk design often explores this idea. For this project I had an idea of doing the reverse: Imagining inanimate everyday objects having living parts going on inside them. For example an x-ray of a TV revealing a skeleton or a Kettle with organs inside. I started sketching some doodles of things I imagined in my head.

I think I could play around with this idea as it's quite expansive. I could make observational studies of many everyday objects I find around the house and then re-imagine them in this way.

Vincent Bocognani

Vincent Bocognani is an illustrator who has created many funny T-Shirt designs based on popular culture references. What I like most is how imaginative yet simple his ideas are, showing familiar characters in a different light. I also like his style, which has this high contrast grainy appearance and uses lots of rich colours. I think this gives the effect of showing detail but you can see it's still the illustration is quite stylized.

Oscar Wilson

Oscar Wilson is a graphic designer in London who created a series of images for "visitlondon.com" to promote tourist attractions in London. I think the idea is really clever and after looking at his website I can see he's create his own unique style out of these typographic images. I like the bold use of colour and the playful nature of the design, again it has a hand-drawn feel like previous designs I've been looking at. I also like the thick black stroke that outlines these images as well as fills the background where there are gaps between the type. I think it's useful for keeping the shape more rigid and means the design can be placed on different backgrounds without it showing through and making the design illegible.

Additionally these designs tie in with the theme of this project as Oscar Wilson has taken objects that are every-day around London and made them extraordinary in a way.