I'll admit, I was pretty excited about this job. What designer doesn't want their work big and bold in a high traffic area?!

The brief for these banners were: A large part of the zoo is under construction at the moment as we prepare for the arrival of the pandas and finish off the Envirodome. Quite a number of animals have gone to Monarto or other zoos. Also the front of the zoo is going to look pretty ugly with all the construction so we need something big and bold for the Frome Road wall. It needs to have a big impact on people driving by but also contain further information for the foot traffic. I also added that it should be colourful with a simple message and not cluttered with too many images or text. Perhaps one message per 10m panel.

So the overall message for the banners was despite all the goings on here at the zoo, we're still open and there are still plenty of animals and plenty to see and do. Come in and see.

The wall is 80m but had to allow for a 20m gap for the gate where the builders will drive their trucks and tractors, etc through making the length of the banners ~60m.

Here they are below. Very bad photos. It's very difficult to capture 60m of wal,l surprisingly. I'll upload the original design files later which will give a better idea.

The map for Monarto Zoo. I traced the paths from an outdated aerial photo and filled in the blanks using Google Earth.

This is all done in Illustrator CS3.

© Zoos South Australia 2009.

Digital watercolour done in Corel Painter X done using entirely the standard watercolour brush set.

© 2009. Ryan Thomas. All rights reserved.

This is a digital illustration. Corel Painter X using Artist Oils.

© 2009 Ryan Thomas. All rights reserved.