The Impossible Road Trip

An eclectic collection of roadside curiosities from across the US

Client:
Motorbooks
Project Components:
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We presented the concept of quirky pictogram-based illustrations to the Motorbooks editorial team for The Impossible Road Trip book project as a more modern take on the classic, campy “from the great state of…” postcard vernacular. We pushed the bizarre qualities of these landmarks further by placing them onto regional maps using scale and density to our advantage of filling the US with a lot of texture and color. Having personally driven across the US and witnessed first hand the many oversized dinosaurs speckling the open landscape, oversized art forms of all callings, and saddled jackalopes (a personal favorite) that give remote gas stations an even greater purpose—from the start, this project offered a great balance of personal and cultural interest.

Its always nice to try and get a cover that intentionally wraps from from to back— for The Impossible Road Trip cover, we were able to achieve a billboard effect between the front and back cover featuring some of our favorite attractions and of course a vintage VW bus (which makes an appearance throughout the title).
For each of the 5 section openers representing a section of the United States an illustrated map presents some of the key attractions found within the chapter. Its amazing to see all of the variations of fish, repurposed muffler men statues and Paul Bunyans.
Each chapter also features at least one illustrated infographic highlighting and comparing the scale of some of these roadside marvels, states like Minnesota have a lot of pride in their fish statues.
We just had to use Interstate in this book and combined it with a favorite go-tos—Surveyor, the two selections worked well together to give enough personality, appropriate context, credibility, and legibility to get into all of the critical details.