Illustrated (Modern-day) Tourism Campaigns

A while ago I featured some very charming ‘See America’ illustrated tourism posters from the 1930′s, with the promise to see what modern-day examples I could later dig up. Illustration is something that isn’t too common in tourism advertising these days, especially for the mainstream market. Even so, I managed to find a few great examples.

This Taiwan branding campaign by Winkreative features the illustrations of Japanese artist Satoshi Hashimoto. I like it a lot, but I don’t know if I can see many other countries taking a cartoon-style approach like this for their nation-wide tourism identity. I mean, Australia never would!

But, having said that, here’s another ‘cartoon-style’ approach for the city of Montreal in Canada, albeit with a very different personality. This campaign (by agency Sid Lee) focuses on the 106 festivals that take place in the city each year, and features a motley collection of imaginary hybrid animal mascots. I don’t think I like it much visually, but apparently it got a lot of attention at the time, and even scored an article in the NY Times. Here, the creative director of Sid Lee made the interesting observation that “in the overcrowded tourism advertising category all the destinations are marketed in the same way” using photographs of “pretty people in a restaurant or skyline shots.” She went on to say that “The language in the tourism industry is ‘a hardware city’ versus ‘a software city,’ and destinations like Paris and New York, with well-known buildings and attractions, are “hardware cities” while Montreal, which is sold on “more of a vibe,” is a “software city.” Good on them for trying something different, I guess!

*images via Tailored

So those are a couple of highly-visible campaigns directed at the general public, but if you dig a little deeper you start to find some wonderful, more boutique, tourism illustrations. Monocle in particular is brilliant at commissioning artists to create illustrations for their destination coverage. Interestingly, they often have an old-style look about them, recalling the ‘golden age’ of travel from the 1960′s and earlier, and taking us back full-circle to the vintage tourism posters that originally caught my eye!

*Spain illustration by Lab Partners for Monocle, via Creative Roots.

*Sao Paulo map by Ty Wilkins and Brent Couchman for Monocle, via Creative Roots.

*Illustration for Star Alliance and Monocle by Satoshi Hashimoto, via Frog & Princess.