The tourism in Madrid needs a fresh update. A way to see the city in differents ways than expected as usual. This assignment circulates the rooftops of Madrid. 

There is a million things to see and do in the great city of Spain, Madrid. 

But why only see all these amazing places from the low streets of the city, when you can go to the top of the city and get a better and more beautiful experience. 

Imagine standing on the Principal Hotel building having the stunning view of all the monuments in the area while enjoying beautiful art and design at the Circulo de Bellas Artes or having an exotic cocktail on the Sunset Lookers hotel while enjoying the breath taking sunset of Madrid and its incredible skyline. 

Whether you are surrounded by beautiful colours in the day time, or gazing at the million stars shining at night - this rooftop tour guide will give you a magical and unforgettable experience of Madrid in heights.  

The first poster represents the culture you can experience at the rooftops of Madrid. The poster at the right represents the leisure of Madrid, and the poster in the middle is the combination of both - the hybrid. 

In this folder it was very important for us to keep the flat design as on the posters. We wanted them to be seperated from the posters, but at the same time make them connect. Therefore we chose to use the exact color codes as we used on the posters.

The first thing we did was handing out post its to all members in the group. We made two seperations: 

When that was done, we wrote everything down to see if we have been writing the same things, and then we came up with the idea to make a tour guide for tourists to see Madrid from up above instead of down below. 

We came up with the name "Madrid in heights" and began brainstorming on what keywords would fit to that. 

At last, we wanted to create a metaphor with the idea, and therefore we began brainstorming on quotes which would fit. 

We ended up with chosing "When they go low, we go high", as our main quote. 

We wanted to create the skyline of Madrid as a vector graphic, and therefore we went out in the city to get inspired. We found some different bulding which was interesting and inspiring. 

The exhibition Madrid Graphica 17 at Plaza de Matadero was also highly inspirational to us. There was actually a whole lot of posters illustrating the same things as we wanted to. At this point our main focus was to create a simple poster with a strong graphic saying. 

Our very first idea was to make the skyline of Madrid as a reflection of day and night. We used the pentool in Illustrator to create the buildings. 

We used Google Color Material Design to find colormatches. On the day light side we focused on warm colors and on the reflected night time side we used blue toned colors. All colors we chose were all number 800 colors. 

The first thought we had was to make our title fit within the buildings outlines. But when we had it done, it just seemed to chaotic. So we deleted the text. 

We recoqnized that the day time/night time was not clear enough, so therefore we wanted to make the contrast even bigger by making one side completely black and the other completely white. 

We put on the text and it all came together. 

We wanted to add even more colours to the poster to really make sure to catch peoples attention. Therefore we chose to make a more detailed sky with orange and purple colors. This ended up being our standing point. With the rays shining up from the middle of the city giving the feeling that the city is something unique, is difinitely one of Madrids keywords!

Even though we were satisfied with the skyline poster, we still went home and tried to develop something completely different. Just for the fun of it. We came up with these three examples.

We did not end up using these illustrations, but it difinitely helped us in the right direction with what kind of design the culture and leisure poster should have. 

On the first draft on the culture poster we had very warm toned colors. The buildings are not aligned because we wanted to illustrate the offbeat crooked side of Madrid. We wanted the buildings to come alive and thought this way was perfect. 

By making the buildings imperfect it got a special atmosphere and charm. 

Throughout the way we wanted to make the poster relate even more to the hybrid poster. Therefore we wanted to make the colors seperate more from each other and not melt togehter. 

We added different blue toned colors to the items on the buildings and made the contrast colours of the buildings themself bigger and more sand tones. 

This is the final culture poster where we added the same sky as the one on the hybrid poster, we added a few more details - such as the text, the Spanish flags and the look of the color palette. 

At first we had the idea to make the posters different from one another, by making the name of our title different with some symbols on the typography. This is an example we came up with for the leisure poster. 

This is the first draft of the leisure poster. We chose the culture to be at day time and the leisure to be at night time, because when we are on vacation, we mostly do cultural things during the day and leisure things during the night. 

Just like the culture poster, the colors on the poster melted too much together, and we wanted to make more contrast and a better correlation to all of the three posters. 

This is the final leisure poster, where we made more contrast to the colours, added light chains, tapas and more drinks to really indicate what things are leisure to us. 

It was important for us to show the feeling of Madrid within in fonts. At first we wanted to use the same font on all posters to link them together. But as the project came together we reckoned that the saying would be even clearer if the fonts was different from each poster. 

Firstly we brainstormed on the order/chaos side of Madrid - as chaos being leisure, order being culture and a thing in the middle being the hybrid. 

We chose the fonts you see to the right: 

1. Reklame Script Rregular = leisure 

2. Gooddog New = hybrid

3. Fiesta = culture

We wanted to create a map that had the same simple flat design as our posters. We started by making drawings of the expression we wanted to reach. 

After making drawings we started pin pointing the buildings and finding out which roads was most important in the map. 

The first map we made in Illustrator was very simple and almost unclear to understand, it took us a lot of time making the map untill we realized we did not like it.  The squares you see on the map shows the different famous squares in Madrid. 

We came up with the idea to delete the road, and make the houses of the city indicate the roads instead. We used the pen tool to create each and every single house. 

We wanted too keep the same off feeling as on the posters, therefore the houses are imperfect and the hybrid font makes it more fun and alive. 

We made the pins in illustrator and used the exact same color codes as on the posters. The map ended up looking completely different from our first idea, but we can difinitely be proud of this map! 

In the folder we wanted to have the map on the whole one side, and a bunch of different graphic stuff and information on the other. As a starting point we wanted to have the rays from the hybrid poster as background on the flyer. 

As soon as we saw where the folder was heading, we chose to make a complete change. We did not the like expression and suddenly it did not link properly to the posters. 

We went in a completely different direction with more simplicity and proper fonts and colors. 

We wanted to get a sense of how our posters would fit into the real life. Therefore we used mupies to show how the posters can work together side by side, but also as individual advertisers

This project has really been very enjoyable for me. I have been so dedicated to making a product which I can be proud of, I have challenged myself in Illustrator and really learned a lot from the people in my group. 

It has been so fun to actually make a physical product, the feeling of having a procut you made in your hand is so cool. 

But it is not only the product process that has developed me. Being abroad for so long and working at new facilities has given me a whole new view on the graphic design world. 

The social life in Madrid with the other students, the city and the completely different culture has made a huge impact on me. 

I have really been enjoying working with the Spanish student Meri. She has been open to our ideas and tributing with her creative skills.