CiRA Illustration Map
Cartoonish building illustration map of the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA). Those illustrations were used for the cover for the CiRA News Letter (2017 Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter).
CiRA is publishing their news letter four times in a year. I was asked to redesign the cover and layout of the news letter for the 2017 fiscal year.
Since we sometimes received a question from people asking what is going on the CiRA building, we decided to show how people are working at CiRA by friendly cartoonish illustration map: The Spring issue focuses on the large open lab and the spiral stair of the CiRA first building, the Summer issue focuses on the connecting passageway, the Autumn issue focuses on the CiRA second building and the Winter issue focuses on the CiRA third building which was completed in February 2017.
Adding Bird:
While making the illustration, I came up an idea to put a bird since this illustration map is bird's eye view (also, since I love birds.) One of my favorite bird, black kite (Milvus migrans) abounds in Kyoto, so I first put him at the top for the Spring issue. For the Summer issue, I put barn swallow, a migrating bird appears in Japan during early Spring to late Summer. For the Autumn issue, I put bull-headed shrike on the coloring tree (a prey was first placed on the branch , but removed since it was disturbing,) For the Winter issue, I put a flock of black-headed gulls which are seen in Kamo river as a common winter feature in Kyoto.
black kite (Milvus migrans) taken at Kamo river
The full News Letter can be downloaded at
http://www.cira.kyoto-u.ac.jp/j/pressrelease/pdf/Newsletter_Vol_29.pdf, http://www.cira.kyoto-u.ac.jp/j/pressrelease/pdf/Newsletter_Vol_30.pdf
http://www.cira.kyoto-u.ac.jp/j/pressrelease/pdf/Newsletter_Vol_31.pdf, http://www.cira.kyoto-u.ac.jp/j/pressrelease/pdf/Newsletter_Vol_32.pdf
(Japanese only)
Like "Where's Wally?" there is Dr. Shinya Yamanaka somewhere in the illustrations.
Those four illustration are connected and combined as follows, creating entire CiRA map.