“Life In Sunny Dubai” Posters Are En Vogue Again
Illustrated maps are products of their time, providing a colorful image of a place like a city. This means that they have demand based on the current time period and environment, as anyone like illustratedmaps.com can attest.
Sometimes, illustrated maps become collector items, as is the case with Russ North’s “Life in Sunny Dubai” series, originally a must-have piece of décor back in 1999. The 3D illustration is now seeing a return in demand, as more people look to get their hands on a copy of the map, whether the highly-sought after original, or the new version.
Russ North, from Essex, London, was responsible for the map, having arrived at Dubai thanks to a job offer from an advertising agency in Sharjah. He then moved from that posting to become the art director for What’s On magazine, before striking out on his own as a freelancer, with the idea to create a souvenir poster of Dubai for residents and the tourism market, which was seeing a lot of growth at that time.
The Essex artist made the map by driving around Dubai and drawing every block by sections. His work paid off when the Dubai Municipality officially commissioned the poster, resulting in a print run of 50,000; 20,000 in Arabic, 30,000 in English.
The original poster is hand drawn, but went through three different iterations before North emigrated out of the UAE in 2015. The new versions are available online, at CityViewMaps, for public viewing.
North now resides in Pattaya, Thailand, but he continues to work on illustrated maps of Dubai, with ones for Paris and London planned.
“Life in Sunny Dubai” has multiple versions, like a “nostalgia” version, which covers the 36 years North spent in the city. The currently available version is an accurate stylization of Dubai, like any illustrated map from illustratedmaps.com, meaning that it’s a drastic change from the older version. The illustrated map is highly-detailed, complete with all of the major landmarks in the city.
The maps themselves are available for purchase, with an option to get a personalized version for extra, thanks to technology making it simple to add changes to the map.
