City Box: the project

CONCEPT
City box is an editorial project to realize a book series dedicated to cities and travels.
Each book of the serie CITY BOX will be inspired from a different city. CB wants to catch the atmosphere of a city, the small details, the emotions and feelings, to bring the reader in a surreal travel into the city. CB is not a traditional tourist guide. It's an art-object able to make people travelling without need to move. An eccentric guide to leaf through to dream a city and to have an insight of its soul.
Every box is inspired by emotions and feelings from who lives the city, who knows it as a tourist, who would like to spend there a single night or his all life.
Images and words mix visions, fascination and telling.
The first City box will be London.

The book is divided in 5 sections: every section represent a different way to look to a city. Basbleu will write the texts following its own fascination and ideas about the city but also with the contributions of the illustrators.
Meetings | Persons
Maps

Daily routine
With other eyes
Tender is the night

1.MEETINGS:the city is made by the people who lives there. People you might meet on the bus, in a cafè, in a drugstore. This section is a special gallery of portraits of people who lives in London, made by images, faces and eccentric stories. A sort of game of details, eccentricity, stereotypes and crazy normality.
The portraits will be 15.
The ideas will propose by Basbleu and developed with the artist.
For the first books this section is illustrated by Xueh Magrini.

2. MAPS: what if instead of a traditional map we find a game or a labyrinth or a crossword puzzle? Why we should take the shorter way to get to the museum when we can pass through mrs.Smith kitchen or swim down the Thames?
Maps is a cross-section into the book: illustrated maps, drown itineraries, travel-games, small accessories essentials to survive (es.the bookmark for the book to read in the tube), a small dictionary of the nonessential words...
For the first books this section is illustrated by Oscar Sabini.

3. AN (EXTRA)ORDINARY DAILY ROUTINE. A Londoner in an ordinary day, with the craziness of the daily routine. A mix of surrealistic and real details to get the amazing commonness that only few people can see.
For the first book this section is illustrated by Rachel Gannon.

4. WITH OTHER EYES
A stranger is in town. He looks around, stops in front of a shop window and looses his touristic guide with the umbrella in the hand...
The ironic travel between cliches and stereotypes, astonishment, ordinariness, misunderstandings and precious discoveries.
For the first books this section is illustrated by Flavien Louis.

5. TENDER IS THE NIGHT
Maybe is due to the strong imagination, maybe is the night which transform places you should know into something else, maybe is just the indigestion of fish and chips: the city seems to change, things and people are not what they seem to be...
For the first books this section is illustrated by Fumie Kamijo.

THE READER
The target audience for the project is:
- who loves travel, who know where they will arrive, and for those who get lost and end up on the moon.
-parents who know that at Louvre Museum, following a traditional guided visit, children get bored;

-who loves illustration (as art), design, art-objects.

THE ILLUSTRATORS
Every section will be given to one artist and he/she will work on text and suggestions with Basbleu.
Basbleu will write and give to you the text/telling of the single section but we ask the highest participation and effort of all to contribute to creative development of the book

AGENDA
The deadline to give the illustrations is on 2008/10/10.
Before this date we’ll work with you to follow and develop as well as possible the creative process of the book.