Lost In Tokyo Illustration

As a designer, I’ve always been interested in Japanese design, culture and mindset for a very long time. I have also tried on numerous occasions to persuade family or friends for a holiday in Japan, Tokyo to explore the city.

I was inspired to create a city illustration for the first time due to the urban Tokyo images I was constantly seeing online whenever I was browsing through social media. It was the neon lights, dark alleyways, power lines, vending machines and warm atmosphere. That sparked an idea in my head to base my next project illustration on this wonderful city.

I tried my best to stay true to the architectural aspect of the back roads of Japan while adding my own twist to different areas

At first, I was thinking about making each building a different colour to bring a much brighter and colourful tone however slowly as I kept developing my illustration. I decided to stick with pink windows with a base grey building layer that is typically common.

Lastly I spent countless hours looking at images, videos and anything else I could find to give me more ideas for this illustration to use space wisely.

I used google translate to place words with different meanings and similar to the structure of each building. I was hoping to find a Japanese translator to help me with the wording that I’ll eventually ask to double-check each word with the appropriate grammar/spelling.

I thank everyone who has been patient with my illustration because it’s taken me around 35 hours with hard work and dedication to complete, so I kindly ask people to like/reshare this post!

Poster format will be available in August with a pre-order option. I’ll announce it on my Instagram stories so go follow @dhavdesign