Presenting the 2018 Oak Park City Guide!
It's so nice to see this project out on the streets! We have been working on this for several months now.
Here's the final booklet - It's full of great stories about the city of Oak Park, community info and a great Business Directory. This was a total team effort with Steffie at the helm leading us through the project. Writers, photographers, sales people, distribution and me for the graphic layout of the cover and many of the editorials. (no advert design)
Earlier in the year I had a totally different look, but after the stories and content started coming in I changed the cover to be a little more playful - my concept was "grassroots yet hipster" in look! I also established and communicated the color palette, font guidelines and layout templates for the entire book.
For the cover I started with drawing an abstract map of Oak Park with the pen tool in Illustrator (using a base map from google) - I made it a little sloppy to retain a friendly feel. I then worked on the cover title design. I wanted a 1970's hipster feel - so I created extruded lettering in Market Deco font. I added color and a white stroke. The sunflowers reflect the many community sunflower plots all along 9 mile road in Oak Park. I added some trees and people on bikes (they were a stock eps file that I edited) and then drew a cute dog in Illustrator. I chose a yellow and green theme as that reflects the city's crest and colors. So far I am getting a lot of good feedback on the cover. It's fresh and original looking and is attracting some attention.
