Masterproject (MA)

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I am happy to announce that my masterproject, an illustrative concept of an eBook for Kids titled “Reise mit mir durch Madagaskar” (engl. Travel with me through Madagascar) won the “Master Design Support Prize” of 2012!

Photo: Goran Galic

I am now about to continue to work on my eBook, which tells about the daily life, culture and nature of Madagascar. A short preview of some of the illustrations:

The illustrations are a combination of my drawings, which I have collected in my sketchbooks during my several journeys through Madagascar, kids drawings and stamp impressions. The color was then added digitally in Photoshop.

Here are some of the original observational drawings collected in the field in my sketchbook:

I also started making sketchbooklet for kids and handed them over to them. The first step of using this sketchbooklets as a source of imagery, was to extract drawings with carbon paper. I tried collect different aspects of Malagasy daily life and culture. Some of the drawing I then had carved into stamps in Antananarivo. Those little stamp illustrations of my drawings and kids drawings where then used in the illustrations to enrich it with the perspectives of those young kind of their environment.

For those of you interested in the story behind the book, I would like to describe shortly how the process lead to the actual form of the project:

In the beginning of my studies I wanted to realize an illustrated book to advertise the usage of recycling paper. During creating some illustrations I figured out, that I was actually more interested in the topics of extinction of species and rainforest destruction.

As these are quite wide topics and I didn’t want to lead my project into randomness, I decided to get into an open process. This decicion was a bit tricky, because I could not foresee the outcome of my Masterproject.

During doing some research, I repeatedly stumbled over Madagascar. The forth biggest island in the world has an unique biodiversity, which is at the same time highly threatened. Madagascar is one of the 10 poorest countries in the world, with an unstable political situation since 2009, which enormously exacerbated pressure on its natural resources.

After doing some more detailed reasearch about the countries issues, I decided to make a field-excursion to figure out, how I could participate in the field of environmental education as a drawer.

During three months I had the chance to explore various places of the country and – by constantly documenting my impressions by drawing – I got closer to the people of Madagascar. I gained some insight in the Malagasy way of living and their culture. Time after time I had to admit to myself, that my interest faded from the intention of participation in environmental education, towards experiencing the Malagasy way of living an being.

After I came back from my journey, I did not just bring a lot of different impressions and souvenirs, but also a punch of sketches, kids-drawings and handcrafted stamps back to Switzerland.

During the last few months of my studies I did create the illustrations from compositions of my drawings, kids drawings and stamp impressions. I have decieded to color the illustrations in Photoshop in order to be more flexible, in case I would like to change them later on.

That was a key moment of my project, I got the idea to invite someone to a virtual trip to Madagascar and experience it’s uniqueness through my point of view. The process lead me to making the illustrative concept of an eBook for western kids, so they can explore the daily life, nature and culture of Madagascar.