This project visualizes the fictional city Thekla from Italo Calvino's book Invisible Cities
Those who arrive at Thekla can see little of the city, beyond the plank fences, the sackcloth screens, the scaffoldings, the metal armatures, the wooden catwalks hanging from ropes or supported by sawhorses, the ladders, the trestles.
If you ask “Why is Thekla’s construction taking such a long time?” the inhabitants continue hoisting sacks, lowering leaded strings, moving long brushes up and down, as they answer “So that it’s destruction cannot begin.” And if asked whether they fear that, once the scaffoldings are removed, the city may begin to crumble and fall to pieces, they add hastily, in a whisper, “Not only the city.”
If, dissatisfied with the answers, someone puts his eye to a crack in a fence, he sees cranes pulling up other cranes, scaffoldings that embrace other scaffoldings, beams that prop up other beams.
“What meaning does your construction have?” he asks. “What is the aim of a city under construction unless it is a city? Where is the plan you are following, the blueprint?” “We will show it to you as soon as the working day is over; we cannot interrupt our work now,” they answer.
Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. “There is the blueprint,” they say.
If, dissatisfied with the answers, someone puts his eye to a crack in a fence, he sees cranes pulling up other cranes, scaffoldings that embrace other scaffoldings, beams that prop up other beams.
“What meaning does your construction have?” he asks. “What is the aim of a city under construction unless it is a city? Where is the plan you are following, the blueprint?” “We will show it to you as soon as the working day is over; we cannot interrupt our work now,” they answer.
Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. “There is the blueprint,” they say.
Wanting to follow a more illustrative approach, we designed a variety of stickers of vehicles, objects and people that you’d see in a construction site.
Another element from the text that we wanted to incorporate is the stars, so we made stickers of constellations.
We then started on the collages. An important element we wanted to us was the natural wear and tear we see in cities, so after making the collages, we printed them and simulated that wear and tear.
We then printed many copies of the distorted collages with the purpose of making a 70 x 100 cm collage by cutting them up and sticking them together using scotch tape.
Another element from the text that we wanted to incorporate is the stars, so we made stickers of constellations.
We then started on the collages. An important element we wanted to us was the natural wear and tear we see in cities, so after making the collages, we printed them and simulated that wear and tear.
We then printed many copies of the distorted collages with the purpose of making a 70 x 100 cm collage by cutting them up and sticking them together using scotch tape.
In creating the logo, we were inspired by pictures of construction sites, specifically the lines at the top of a building when looking at it from a corner perspective. We paired that with the font Neue Haas Grotesk, for a clean, and minimalistic logo.
Fonts Used: Neue Haas Grotesk by Liontype (made by Christian Schwartz, 2011 and Max Miedinger, 1957)
