OUIL406 - Studio Brief 2 - Greetings From

When choosing the 4 cities that I wanted to illustrate with these postcards, I didn't want to pick something predictable like New York and use the Statue of Liberty to represent it, I wanted to do something unique and interesting.

I started by thinking of different cities from video games, like Pallet Town from Pokemon or Rapture from the Bioshock games, but I ended up thinking that it may not be individual enough if I just ended up copying or reinterpreting art work that already existed in the games.

I then thought about doing some based on something real life rather than fiction, So I thought about a couple of ideas including abandoned cities, or famous murderers from various cities. However I didn't know if this would be recognisable enough to everyone, I realised that I had to start thinking about my target audience, and who would recognise the theme I wanted to follow.

I decided on famous gangs from different cities. After doing some research I made a list of potential gangs I would look at:

The Gestapo, The Mafia, The Yakuza, The Triads, The Blood and The Crips, Neo Nazis, Mara Salvatrucha, La Eme, The Mungiki, The Hells Angels and Cosa Nostra. 

I decided to focus on Neo Nazis, The Blood and The Crips, The Yakuza and finally Cosa Nostra (The Mafia) as I thought these had the most recognisable and interesting symbolism. 

Neo Nazism

some reference imagery:

CURTIS ALLGIER

I think the most recognisable way of representing Neo Nazism would be to look at the tattoos. I was thinking about putting the above image into illustrator and tracing over the top of it, using just the outline of his tattoos to create the shape of his face.

Gulabi Gang

I also wanted to collect some reference images for general Indian culture, so I could think about some designs or patterns I could add into the post card.

Bloods/Crips

'The origin of the Bloods and their rivalry with the Crips dates to the 1970s, where the Pirusstreet gang, originally a set, or faction, of the Crips, broke off during an internal gang war, and allied with other smaller gangs to found the gang that would eventually become known as the Bloods'

Bloods members identify themselves through various gang indicators such as colors, clothing, symbols, tattoos, jewelry, graffiti, language, and hand signs. The Bloods gang color is red. They like to wear sports clothing, including team jackets that show their gang color. Some of their favorite teams include the San Francisco 49ers, the Philadelphia Phillies, and the Chicago Bulls. They are also known to wear Dallas Cowboys clothing, whose logo contains a five-pointed star.

Costra Nostra 

Joe Adonis

Al Capone