I started off this assignment by looking through the “Times of India” newspaper that came through my door one morning, very dry in terms of visual content. And I found about 6 different articles that used illustrations as support:
Following this, I ran through the article, and recognised a somewhat consistent relationship between the visuals and the writing in that the visuals vaguely adapted the article’s sentiment (something as general as a person looking at something suspicious on a laptop) paired with an element that directly reflects or points to a particularly striking subject within the article, like the glowing pink silhouette of a woman resting against a wall with a leg bent against the wall to suggest the browsing has something to do with prostitution, particularly because of the neon sign effect; in that sense it is still vague but it allows the reader to categorise the article under a specific topic or subject.
Since I didn’t want to spend too much time on this exercise, I chose “the best restaurant in town” as the heading for my “article”. And I chose the my own city (Bombay/ Mumbai) as the “town” in this heading. And I began searching for articles on the same subject and simultaneously working on ideas for the illustration (starting with a mind map).
This turned out to be more of a flowchart since I’d already thought of a particular direction to take with this exercise. At the same time, I found a suitable article to base my work off of – a list of the top 10 (supposedly) best restaurants in the city of Mumbai. Unsurprisingly, there weren’t any articles written on a single “best restaurant”, so the list was the only way to go. The article was from the Telegraph UK and titled “10 must-visit restaurants in Mumbai”. Also, I couldn’t access the article directly so I had to copy the written content before getting redirected to the subscription page. Below is a link to the article:
From this article, rather than taking the whole thing as a reference, I searched for something that I associated with personally, since most of these restaurants were for the “well-heeled” crowd, as they described it, and I haven’t really been to any of them.
Keiba
Keiba lies alongside the stables at Mahalaxmi racecourse, and is possibly Mumbai’s most enchantingly pretty restaurant, with its courtyard shaded by brilliant-red bougainvillea and cherry-tree mural blossoms across the interior’s walls. Well-heeled Mumbaikers drape themselves across pea-green banquettes, tucking into a fashionably pan-Asian offering, including dim sum, sushi and fragrant Thai curries: the sashimi, the har gow (prawn dumplings) and edamame fried rice are all as pretty on the palate as the setting is on the eye. Cocktails are another draw for the in-crowd, such as the tangy Captain Obvious, which mixes shochu, matcha tea liqueur and rice vinegar reduction.
So there were a lot of interesting things about this particular restaurant, for one it provided an Asian cuisine, my favourite, and it sat right next to the Mahalaxmi racecourse, a horse racecourse in South Bombay. Ideally, the best way to approach this would be to look for something specifically characteristic of the restaurant rather than touch upon an assumed relationship between it and a neighbouring landmark. However, I took a more straightforward approach and did the latter.
It looked good but it made zero sense next to this article since the racecourse was just a locational reference, not an implication that they shared a crowd, so I dumped the idea and moved on to the next.
The next was a culmination of the flowchart. The idea was that the waiting line was so long that it extended all the way to the Great Wall of China, one of the seven wonders of the world and an icon of extremity. Unfortunately, I realised that it was two generalised an approach because this could for any “best restaurant” but not this particular one, and also that there was no relevance in using the Great Wall of China because it did not serve any purpose beyond the exaggeration of the length of the waiting line. Although, with a bit of tweaking to the dialogue, it may be a bit more usable. So I saved it for later and worked on one final idea, adapted from the “Asian food in mumbai” phrase I wrote on the corner of my mind map page.
In my head this actually seemed like the most relevant idea since it captures the asian part of the restaurant, and compliments the service over there by implying that the staff goes to certain lengths to maintain the quality of food and improve the experience of the diner. However, once I put it down on the canvas, it seemed rather corny and stereotypical. Perhaps it was because of the nature of the illustration, but as I thought about it, it just seemed more and more offensive to the restaurant. Either way, I decided to finish this exercise here, as I could’ve kept going for hours and find something wrong with every illustration. But honestly, I believe the problem was a lack of research. And maybe I rushed through the process, but I did gain some insight on what I should look for, should I decide attempt another assignment of a similar nature.
Learning Log 