Making “brand new” appear “old fashioned”
This week I had a restaurant in England wanting to order two wall murals for their restaurant. They came up with a pretty cool concept with colors. You see, their restaurant is a building more than 200 years old, and they wanted their mural to show the age – even though it is made from a chart updated a few weeks ago!
Their chart is an interesting one: The Straits of Juan de Fuca leading into the Straits of Georgia. This is a major shipping area and you can see in his chart the shipping lanes marked in magenta. Note too, the cartouche of the chart is in the upper left-hand corner.
The green line isn’t part of the original chart; I used it with the client to identify the area he wanted to be made into a mural. But to get it to look like an old chart – maybe even a “ye olde charte” some cosmetics needed to be done.
(1) We removed the shipping lanes with our graphic software, because really old charts probably didn’t show the shipping lanes. and . . .
(2) Changed the color formula so that the chart would appear like a newspaper looks when the acid in the newspaper, sunlight, and time turns it into a golden tan.
(3) Finally, we moved the graphic of the cartouche down to cover an inset on the lower part of southern Victoria Island.
Looking at it now, you might think it was made in the nineteenth century, but it is, in fact, crisp and new thanks to the idea our English restaurateurs devised!
I’m thinking this particular chart has wider application than a restaurant in England. Why it just might look good in a restaurant, yacht club, or bar in the Pacific Northwest. Or maybe your den . . .