Shift Forward is a technological startup from Porto, Portugal, who offers products that solve digital advertising big data pain points. They wanted to decorate a wall in their office with an illustration that reflected, in a fun way, the company philosophy and main areas of business mixed with a bunch of pop culture references selected by the team members. The illustration should also be applicable into a t-shirt.
Monarqa agency gave me the opportunity to work on this project with complete freedom and it was a really fun and rewarding process.
Sketches
The first image is one of the initial designs presented to Shift Forward. After a first version where was included an illustration of the skyline of Porto and the feedback of client, we went for this approach. They liked the overall look, except the Netflix and Chill reference and the loose placement of the key business areas.
The second image is more close to the final version. We can see that most of the elements are in their final position. The loose placement of main business areas was solved by turning each of them in a small illustration that works perfectly with the whole set, but it can be used independently. The brain on the center was afterwards replaced by a representation of the Shift Forward logo. The client felt that was missing a more direct connection to the company.
Vectorization
The fun and laborious process of turning all the elements in clean and crisp vector shapes. In this phase, some design changes can be made although the priority is respecting the final approved version. In this project I chose a limited colour palette again, I think it helps to achieve a more cohesive and balanced illustration.
One of the biggest problems presented in this project was the fact that the illustration should be able to work in a horizontal version for the wall and in a vertical version for the t-shirt. It was necessary a solution that allowed an easy adaptation of the illustration to the two different formats. Hence the decision in making the main elements independent, which can quickly change position, and in using small objects (circles, plus signs and clouds) to fill the empty spaces between those main elements.
