LVN april 2018

The City Council of Leuven asked me to design an Infographic with the most striking results of the “City Monitor” for their city magazine (in Dutch).

The deadline for this project was very short: We only had one week between the publication of the City Monitor and the printing deadline for the magazine. The sketches below give you some insight in my process from start to finish.

N°1 The initial sketch

I make my first sketch as quick as possible. This result is a very loose drawing, but it gives me and my client something to talk about. Because I don’t waste too much time on details, I can start over if needed. I also finished a small part in Affinity Designer so we can discuss the finalized look of the illustration.

N°2 A cleaner sketch

In this case, they liked the sketch right away! So, I proceeded a more elaborate sketch to get the details right. Some characters moved place (spot the lady with the dog!), and I put some love in the characters to make sure the whole population of Leuven is represented in the drawing.

N°3 The finished drawing

Because I made a demo of the finalised look in my first sketch, and pinned down the details in the next one, finishing the drawing is a matter of putting in the time. But it’s not as straightforward as you might expect: I still adjust a details when while I’m going along.

Examples?

• The city council asked me to add an extra percentage about playgrounds on the bottom left (63%). So I added a swing and a slide and moved the text block of the (16%).
• Thelady with the dog walks in the other direction now! This makes it more clear the text next to her belongs to the lady on the bike.
• In the sketch I tried to make the buildings at the roundabout follow the curve but it looked a bit odd, so I put them straight it in the final drawing.

N°4 The LVN-edition

From the start, we weren’t sure about the colours. Some people of the city council liked my proposal with primary colours, but others were in favour of using the overall colour palette of their city magazine. In the end they asked me to swap the colours so the illustrations blend nicely with the magazine. Questions like these arefairly common, so over the years I fine-tuned my workflow so I can make these last-minute adjustments fast and easy.