A personal challenge to involving creating cohesive designs & illustrations for a website aimed at guiding people to experience Hong Kong like a local.

Hong Kong has always had a "structured chaos" kind of appeal to me, so I decided to try and replicate this in design. I started by creating a grid for the web design, and thinking about what kind of content I would like to see on the site, if I was a tourist in Hong Kong.

I knew the site needed some illustrative elements, because I felt this would be the best way to represent the structured chaos of the city in a repeatable / pattern-able way.

I tried the following approach first, but felt it didn't have the feeling I was after. I felt that this type of illustration would not lend itself well to what I had in mind, however I was happy with how it looked on its own.

I then went down a much more structured, digital route. I stuck to three different HK flat layouts, and thought I could create a pretty cool pattern out of these if I laid them out correctly, and randomised the order they appear in a little. I also wanted to have some looser drawings of some more recognisable Hong Kong objects, like the taxis, dim sum, junk boats, and mountains, but didn't end up using these in the final designs.

Although my process for this piece was not linear in the slightest, let's say I started with the logo. Because my project was about helping people locate things within a city, I thought the website name should have something to do with that. I settled on "Where about?" as it implies a conversation - one you have when trying to find a good meeting spot.

I also liked the tiled aspect of the logo design as I associate the city with decorative tiled walls, and the game of mahjong.

When working out the page design, I thought it would be a good idea to replicate the built-up structure of the city by creating quite a visible, rigid grid for the page content to sit in. Although looking back I think it might be a bit too rigid, I like the general direction of this idea.

Below you can see the end outcome. I was very happy with the general look, and felt like I had accomplished my goal of capturing the "structure" of the city, but still needed to work on the chaos. I feel that I need to include more elements from my apartments illustration to help create that feeling. However, I ran out of time as I focused on other projects in my daily life. Who knows, maybe I will re-visit this in the future?