Sea City

Earlier this year the new SeaCity Museum opened in Southampton, aiming to tell the story of this historic maritime city and it's people. 

I worked with WoodMcgrath on 2 parts of the new museum interior; one, a drawing of the RMS Titanic's cargo manifest, and the other, a large-scale world map.  

The Titanic 

My brief was to draw each item onboard the RMS Titanic in 2 categories. 'Key Commodities' included 75 parcels, 2750 fish and 5760 individual pieces of crockery. The other category, 'Strange Cargo' included 1 case of auto parts, 4 cases of opium and 400 tennis balls. 

Each individual item had to be drawn and accurately duplicated before being placed within the large-scale outline of the ship. I vecotorised each of the drawings and tesselated some of the larger-grouped items to make better use of the space. Despite the  Titanic being huge there was a lot of shuffling and rearranging to make sure there was enough room to fit it all in.   

The large installation includes video screens and hidden doors, containing original items from the ship. 

I'm really pleased with how the installation has been put together, and it has real visual impact in the museum. It's also very satisfying to see one of the largest illustrations I've ever created installed in the museum, especially after spending so much time staring at it and refining the artwork on my computer screen.

Gateway to the World  

The second brief was to create an inverted globe around the museum's main exhibition entrance. 'Southampton Gateway to the World' plots each significant voyage that either set sail or arrived at Southampton through the ages. 

The 40sq foot illustration had to be designed to fit the space with each of the routes and labels plotted clearly and accurately  on the map.

Typeface

I created a new typeface to work with both the Titanic and world map artworks. 'Southampton' is designed to appear hand-rendered to soften the rigid information contained in both the map and the ship illustration, yet be clearly readable by the museum's various visitors. 

Special thanks to Susie and Martin, and the nice people at SeaCity.