Marseille Rail
This project is centered on investigating the material and designed qualities of print artefacts, gaining a deep understanding of their purpose and meaning, and then using that information to reinvent archival pieces in a new and exciting way. The project began with deciding on the artefact—I chose a map titled Le Port de Marseille et Ses Annexes from the David Rumsey Map Collection. I was drawn to it both for my personal connection, as I studied abroad in Aix-en-Provence, just a short train ride away from Marseille, and for its bold graphic qualities which made it feel timeless, despite being published in 1951.
Our first project was to produce a 1-to-1 physical recreation—a Study Facsimile—capturing every rip, stain, and property of movement. I then moved on to a Recreation, using Adobe Illustrator to copy the design, drawing, and type exactly. It was a painstaking process that took upwards of 60 hours of work, but without this process, I wouldn’t have come to deeply understand the map in the way I do now. It allowed me to investigate how each piece intersected and worked with each other, as well as the ways this piece may have been created.
Study Facsimile & Archival Source
For the Reinvention portion of this project, I designed a fictional luxury railroad line’s ticket, brochure, and welcome folder that would be handed to guests upon arrival at the train station. The goal was to create something deeply experiential that would give a guest a meaningful connection with the railroad. I wanted this piece to be something akin to what you might receive at a high-end hotel or Michelin-star restaurants, to be kept and saved and remembered for a guest’s lifetime. The idea to build a railline off this came from the interesting graphic marks on the map for the railroad originally. I also felt that being that this map was originally for sea travel, primarily cargo shipping, bringing in a new kind of travel and centering it around a passenger experience would be an interesting new take on the historical piece.
Reinvention for a Modern Age
The artefact consists of created a unique curved ticket, a custom pocket to hold it, a brochure with a designated holder, and a highlights panel featuring stops along the trip. I employed use of all 3 kinds of paper available in our print lab—Laser printing for the brochure, matte paper for the folder, and a gloss paper for the ticket—to emulate the differences in texture and weight you’d experience with this piece of media in the real world. To elevate the look and feel of the artefact, I then hand-debossed and gold foiled the logo and perforated the ticket. I feel what resulted is a truly immersive artefact that makes the viewer feel as if they are part of a real, guest-centered experience.
