Passport

So I got my first passport when I was eleven, it was a Mickey Mouse passport and it only granted me entrance to the countries of the Epcot World Showcase. Even though it was nothing more than a toy, it sparked in me a desire to travel. I loved the idea of getting stamps at each country I went to, and seeing the different architecture, clothes and food. It made me very excited to one day have a passport of my own.

Since then I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to 13 different countries (as of May 2019). However the sad part is that you don’t always get stamps when passing through customs, and when they do it’s not a cute and iconic representation of the country. Even though the amount of stamps I have in my passport is underwhelming, to me it’s still a magical key to that unlocks the world.

The design

I created this passport design for my late Spring 2019 trip to Ireland, Netherlands and Germany. I needed a drawstring bag so I designed to design something cute and commemorative for the trip. They say necessity is the father of invention, which is very true in this case because it got me out of my pop culture comfort zone to design for a different subject matter.

I wanted to create a monoline version of the symbol on US Passports, so I sketched on top of it, simplifying and elements by hand rather than trying to conceptualize and draw all at once with the pen tool. Sometimes you need to go back to the drawing board, or just start there!