The Luxury shopping guide SHOP published by Global blue has been on my radar of “commissions I’d love to get my hands on” for a long time now. Probably since it went around the design blogs a couple of years ago.
Their use of Illustrations has always been impressive and clever so when they got in touch about a year ago to commission a few covers, I was over the moon.

The first two covers they asked me to design were Buenos Aires and Riga. The briefs were very open and I was pretty excited to get started on those.

For Buenos Aires, I had to find a way to represent the very excentric and iconic Aghentinan eyewear designer Carla Di Si.

As soon as I researched the look and feel of the brand, I knew I was in for a fun ride. Those glasses were really pop and wacky and I could really see it working with my illustration approach.

I got sketching and here are the 3 first ideas I sent over.

I Loved the leopard frames but they felt the last one was the most representative of the designer with those iconic hexagonal frames. The sketch was lacking a bit feminity though and the glasses were one step too far in the “clown” direction so I reworked that sketch and created a 70’s pattern for the top instead of on the glasses. They loved it.

For the Riga cover, the brief was much more open : It was basically all about make up. Lipstick, eye shadows and nail polish. I couldn’t wait to get started on that one either and the first step of the process was to collate images that would inspire me for composition and mood.

Here are the first sketches I sent over. I liked both direction and was exploring airbrushing in order to get that make up pop on the cover.

The second sketch was a bit more sexy and sultry in a way but they went for the first one but felt that the treatment was a bit too much and didn’t need the gradients. I decided to pare it down more and use bold flat colours instead of gradients and airbrush and here is the final cover illustration for Riga.

Both covers were approved and sent to print.
The client came back a couple of weeks later with 2 new covers for me to design : Stockholm and Naples. Sketches coming soon : )

Malika x