As I finalise my idea for the travel app, I thought it did be a good idea to research/revisit some illustrators/illustration styles in order to decide what kind of graphic I want for my own app.

I say revisit because as a huge lover of illustration I have collected many art books over the years, I will revisit a few of them in this blog.

Another thing that I need to mention is that I already have a loose idea in my mind of what kind of "feel" I want my travel app to have. Since my app is associated with quests, I think it can go in one of 2 directions;

1. clean, more mature goal hitting app. Such as the one below, it is a bit more serious;

2. A more "childish" and "fun" approach, rather reminiscent of video game quests. But the overall app will still be clean and cohesive, but with a hint of childhood nostalgia. I really like this idea because as children we have all gone on "quests" to the nearest shop with our friends or played quests based games where a goal had to be archived. The example I found below just happens to be the game style, but I'm sure that there are other ways to make the app more "child nostalgia";

Currently, I leaning towards option 2, I think the idea is a bit more unique. However, since the most important thing about the travel app is that it is easy to use, overall usability is an important factor. Adding too many quirky elements may hinder usability. Another thing is that I want the app to be for the general public, too much video game style or childish style might not suit everyone's taste.  In the end, maybe I'll have a mesh of options 1 and 2. I'm definitely keeping my options open till I do more research on illustration styles, but since I have an idea of what kind of illustrations might suit my app, I'll mainly look at variations of these styles.

Online research

The first thing I looked at is of course one of my favourite visual game of all time - Monument valley;

It has been a while since this game has been released, but I have never gotten over just beautiful it is, no other game has had this much visual impact on me since. I can't even pinpoint why exactly I love the style so much, it is possibly a combination of reasons;

• the geometric shapes are so very satisfying
• the gradient background with the right amount of negative space
• soft colours
• I also love things that seem very simple to begin with structurally ( the simple geometric shapes and lines), but when you look into them you can see a number of amazing details such as the plants, flowing flags and shading etc

I think this style will be very difficult for me to replicate for my travel app, as I would need to learn how to draw the 3D style in illustrator and the learning process will be too time-consuming for the schedule that I have got. However, I have decided to look at this style first because it really matches what I want the "feel" of the travel app illustration to be. This style has got a hint of childishness to it, but it is also very fitting for adults too. What I can learn from this is that although I want to have more childish graphics, I need to keep the overall style clean, gave an appropriate amount of negative space and not overcrowd the graphic.

Another rather simple art style that I'm really fond of is made by the game developers of Toca Boca. One game's graphics really stood out to me, and I just had to redownload the game and take screenshots of it;