Next, I developed a mini branding guide to keep the look and feel of the overall handbook professional and consistent. I found reference materials of beaches, oceans, cities, and places in southeast Asia. I then developed a color palette by sampling colors from my references. I adjusted the colors a bit to ensure 508 compliance. I also chose appropriate fonts that could translate well into a foreign language since this was geared towards municipalities in Southeast Asia.
I started pulling images from Google maps that were 2D. Then I started thinking about making a 2D map more exciting and showing that major cities are the leading cause of ocean plastic pollution.
At the time, I had been doing some practice in isometric illustration and design, and I immediately began to connect some ideas. As I searched through more reference material, I came across other isometric cities and buildings.
Eventually, I came up with the idea of illustrating a city on the front cover, transitioning it into a more rural area, and eventually into the ocean on the back cover.
Essentially, the idea was to show that the source of ocean plastic pollution begins in cities and that waste eventually trickles down to the ocean. I also wanted to honor the style guide I developed for the overall book and limit my colors to 2-3 to keep it simple yet interesting. The result is what you see below, which received approval from USAID.
If you like what you see and want to work together, get in touch!
cdmdesign24@gmail.com