PIKE PLACE MARKET

I've never been to the Pike Place Market, yet I've found myself becoming very familiar with the historical market located in beautiful Seattle. As some of you know I do maps as well as editorial illustrations. They can be a lot of work sometimes however for the most part very fun and informative. I get to learn a lot about interesting places that I have yet to visit.
The Pike Place Market is one of those places. Thanks to my Fresh page in the Illustration Annual of Communication Arts magazine, I got a call from Andre Mora at Seattle Met magazine. They wanted to do an illustrated map of the market that is not only fun but effective in helping people navigate through the market and still be something that they might want as a keep sake. Let me start by saying that there are great art directors, art directors that just do their job, and art directors that go out of their way to not only make the work great but promote you and your work.
Andre Mora fits into all categories. It was such a pleasure to work with him. If he's not on your list of art directors to work with then he should be. I find in this business that many make wish lists of clients they want to work with and usually their lists consist of art directors that work at the major publication like the New York Times or Rolling Stone etc. Well we must not forget about the smaller publications or place specific publications. Some of my best work and some of the best art directors I've worked with have been from such publications. Examples would be Honolulu magazine, Hour Detroit Magazine, and now I add Seattle Met and Andre Mora to my list. My friend and peer, Dan Page gave me some good advice with regards to art directors and client wish lists. It's amazing if you get to work with the big guys like NY Times, etc. however they use a large variety of illustrators. There are many cases where they might only use you once and then onto the next person. However the same can happen with smaller publications however in a lot of cases if you develop a great working relationship with the art directors there then you have a better chance of them using you time and time again. Or if you're really lucky you are able to score a monthly gig. Now I'm not saying in any way to give up on your wish list and to discount the larger publications. I'm just saying not to forget about the smaller ones. Sorry for going off on a tangent here. Back to the Pike Place project.
I hadn't even started working with Andre on this map and he had already suggested me as a great option to do a map for their sister publication, Portland Monthly. I wasn't even totally finished this map and I got a call from Michael Novak at Portland Monthly to do a map for them. I thought that was really great of Andre to do that before we had even worked together.
Andre was pumped about this Pike Place map for Seattle Met. He was so pumped that Seattle Met took the sketches I was doing to the officials at the Market who loved it. They asked if some extras could be printed to just hand out for free people at the Market.
So cool. Now I feel a need to travel to Seattle to see this place for myself.
Below is the map as it's been printed. Enjoy.











All the Best
mb