MIT Mystery Hunt: Branding Illustration & System

Art Direction, Illustration, Strategy/Ideation, Interactive Design, Infographic Map Design, Hand Lettering, Animation, UI.

Client: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Cambridge, M.A.

Hired to create a diverse variety of web asset illustrations for the 2019 MIT Annual Mystery Hunt. The event is maintained by the previous year’s winners. Each year MIT continues a decades-long tradition that brings together alumni and current students throughout the MLK Day weekend to see which team can complete all the puzzles first. This year’s theme was holidays. The design challenge was to interpret and create adaptable environments based on different holidays in the year. With collaboration from the event staff and with minimal oversight, I lead the art direction, ideation, and functionality of the illustration system. The illustration’s primary function was used with the event website. The focus of this project included providing illustrations to the development team. The illustration system was designed to be modular. It is able to be disassembled and reassembled seamlessly, like a puzzle, and used differently throughout the website or elsewhere. This project fostered thirty-plus illustrations. Shared here are a selection of that. You can view the full interaction of the map and illustrations in the MIT Puzzle Archive. More details throughout the case study.

Process

The illustration process mixes together the best of traditional methods and digital techniques. Each illustration started as a sketch on 11”x17” printer paper that was then traced using a lightbox and black color pencil on a bristol sheet. The final line drawing was then scanned and colored and textured are added using Adobe Photoshop. During this stage is when each image is made to become modular. Sometimes many different drawings were made and then collaged together to make the final primary design, like the Arbor Day example below.