In 2015 Kansas City was on the cusp of a kind of momentum the city has not seen in some time, that has lead to the significant growth in the last decade.
During this time, I was in the beginning of my design career. What began as social post of this personal skyline project I was working on, turned into a multi-retail and wholesale side business and custom commissions. Products are still sold in stores today.
What drew such strong attention to merch with these designs were their intentionality and sophistication. They were different from the artistic (paint mediums, hand illustrations) aesthetic locals were used to seeing from the abundance of incredibly talented creative community in this town.
Kansas City turned into custom requests, which turned into over 40 cities designed and sold at craft shows and brick and mortars. Shirts, cutting boards, prints, digital wallpapers, ornaments, coasters and the most unique commission – a two story graphic mural downtown KC.
The compositions of the skylines weren't based on real views, but several images, landmarks, and favorite elements of the cities – according to the people who lived in them. The layout began with the largest buildings as a foundation, with careful layering of shapes in the foreground to ensure the forms fit together based on both design principles – and trial and error.
Each element was hand traced and vectorized, and color schemes were applied with as minimal number of colors as possible, and duotones on each building to represent perspective and shadow.
A graphics production company reached out to partner on a custom commissioned mural on their 2-story building. With approval from each entity in Kansas City, the design was created as 95 separate panels to individually apply to the window panes using perforated material to filter the west sun.
