Illy City Mug Development

http://desall.com/Contest/illy-City-Mug/Brief

I found this brief online through various competition sites. The client is illy who a big coffee company. The brief : 'illy wants to create a new line of mugs specifically dedicated to the six metropolises selected, that the participants of illy City Mug will interpret by providing as many iconic graphics'

When I read the brief I immediately imagined an iconography response. I am quite interested in simple illustrations and I find icons interesting as they reach a wide audience of many languages and they are still understood.

And so to begin my research I mapped out things that cities are famous for and what makes them cities. 

The cities that illy wanted to represent on their mugs where London, Paris, Milan, Rome, Hong Kong and San Francisco. This is a wide variety of cities and different cultures, I needed to pick a subject that they all would have in common so that they would work as a set.

I picked landmarks, which is probably one of the most well known aspect of a city, plus all of these cities have famous landmarks. 

I looked into some of the famous landmarks of each city and wrote them down. I then chose landmarks from this diagram.

Another thing I found when researching is that all of these cities have an international abbreviation recognised in airports around the world and so to emphasise this feeling of globalisation, (and travel through the reference of airports) I hand wrote these abbreviations, as I wanted the coffee cups to feel more personalised, take away coffee cups are also normal wrote on with marker and so I was also replicating this.

I then drew out the some of the landmarks of each city, and then I tried to draw them simplified, ready to be digitised, I drew two or three so that I would have a choice.

I then digitised the drawings. I stuck to one colour, red as the illy brand is red I wanted it to be in keeping. Plus one colour would make them look more like a set.

(The London Eye)

(Big Ben)

(London Bridge)

(Victoria Peak)
In Hong Kong you can travel up to the top of Victoria Peak and view all the skyscrapers and the city of Hong Kong, I decided to show this as the modern skyscrapers are what makes Hong Kong famous, but drawing skyscrapers alone may not of been that obvious as a lot of cities have them, and so I drew the peak too.

I scanned in my writing and live traced on illustrator. I liked the marker effect it produced. 

On the guidelines illy specified that they wanted their designs to be shown on their mug template, and so I worked within this. 

At first I did try the full name of the city but as I had simplified the landmark I felt it was more appropriate to simplify the name like I had already looked into doing.

(Milan- Milan Cathedral)

I decided upon the design below as I felt that the type fit in the space below the illustration more evenly making the design balanced. 

This format would work for most of the other designs and I stuck to this arrangement where appropriate. For other designs the type worked better at the top. 

Final six.

I did try another arrangement just to see whether it would look better but by hiding half of the illustration it might become unrecognisable and so I left my designs as they where, swell as this this brief needed to be a relatively quick turn around.

Final Designs

The six cities, with all the landmarks made into icons. Each illustration had the cities abbreviation, which I had decided to make the first letter uppercase and the second lowercase which makes the type a little less serious and more friendly.

I felt that some of the 'icons' looked and worked better than others, some I had really managed to simplify well and others I had had to leave details in which made them more complex. For instance, the Cathedral and the Eiffel Tower had worked well as they are still recognisable but simple, whereas the Colosseum and the Golden Gate Bridge are more complex due to the need for a lot of 'window' spaces. 

However I do think that they work as a set and I liked that I had used digital illustration and hand drawn type. But I do not think that cup design is one of my strong points, and I would't do a brief like this in the future.