School project
The brief required me to choose an article from a selection of six articles and read them to find a suitable article, upon which we would have to illustrate suitable imagery to accompany the article. Taking into account its mood and tone, as well as its main subject. I chose the article titled ™So much in this melting pot but find me amadumbe.∫ I felt that it was a humorous article that I enjoyed reading. I also felt that I could relate to it in some way, in terms of the farmiliar setting with the informal street vendors saturating the city of Durban...in my case.
Since this was a highly illustrative based project, I wanted to create an artistic, hand-generated illustration. I have found that I like artwork with a strong sense of black irregular lines with an African aesthetic to them. I drew inspiration from inky type artwork, that is flat and line based too. I feel comfortable with this type of illustration work and I find its my strongest point.
The article gave a descriptive mood and atmosphere of the whole Joburg street scene, where there is the fusion of cultures and languages in the street markets. I got the sense of an energetic and vibrant place where a lot of interaction takes place. My concept centered around taking what the writer had said about the mixing of cultures and languages, and coming up with an illustration that would depict this. I immediately thought of the busyness of the market place and wanted to illustrate just that. Accompanied by all its signage that advertises available products, from food to weird muti concoctions. I wanted to do signage written in different South African languages under a single space within the same radius. I wanted to try and depict the fusing of cultures and languages through signage.
I looked at images of street vendors in Joburg or in South Africa in general...or better yet the Durban street market right across from the DUT city campus.
individual elements for spread indicating street vendor products.
background - used gouache paint with different brushes to paint each color, then took it into photoshop to compile into a single image.
Final double page spread - We had to find a suitable magazine that our spread could be featured in, then mimic its style...I chose One Small Seed, a South African Pop culture and design magazine.
