URBAN PRINTS | EXPERIENCE THE WORLD THROUGH DESIGN
Urban Prints are an elegant collection of 12 urban cities illustrated in a black and white minimalism. They feed our yearning for creativity, connectivity, and exploration.
Urban Prints are more than just posters; they tell a story and forge a lifetime of travel and experience. They feature as much detail as an intricate memory while maintaining a certain obscurity necessary for interpretation.
Most dictionaries simply define a city as “an inhabited place of greater size, population, or importance than a town or village.”
This sounds incomplete to us.
Cities are colorful. They carry history: hundreds of years of struggle, hustle, and culture. This, to us, is the most important part of any city – its people and its traditions.
Therefore, it may seem odd that we designed Urban Prints in the absence of these ‘colors’. In order to highlight the diversity of individual perspective, we stripped city structure to its purest form.
Displaying a city in its most objective form creates even more variation in interpretation. When someone looks at Urban Prints, we want them to find their own meaning, whether it is a city they have experienced or have yet to experience. By drawing heavily from the viewer’s own unique and developing perspectives, Urban Prints become an ever-changing work of art.
The will to wander is a stunningly powerful concept. Travel brings new experiences and new viewpoints.
In the words of the great American traveler, Paul Theroux, “The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human: the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to change the circumstances of your life, to be a stranger, to make a friend, to experience an exotic landscape, to risk the unknown.”
Traveling provides an escape from a society of customs and expectations. The allure of experiencing a new city stems from the lack of a “correct” way to adventure.
For the explorer, the nomad, the traveler, and the jet-setter.
We all dream of traveling but often find ourselves without enough funds, too busy, or unable to commit. Urban Prints are a big reminder to save, plan, and prioritize our innate hunger for exploration.
Urban Prints feature 12 of the world’s largest urban destinations, showcasing diverse city planning techniques as well as the different cultures that they spawn.
Featuring:
Urban Prints map all the key features of each city while keeping the image of its structure clear – something that would impress even the most detailed architects, cartographers, and urban planners.
We designed Urban Prints with the goal of creating clean, minimalistic impressions of city structure. We wanted to create art that impresses, but doesn’t overwhelm.
We drew inspiration from vintage maps that have weathered the ages, creating works of art that are equally timeless.
We spent countless sleepless nights pouring over the design. After going through what seemed like infinite drafts of different concepts and months of design, we formed the perfect marriage of minimalism and substance.
The Urban Prints themselves are backed by Heavyweight Exhibition Fiber Paper and printed with an Inkjet PrecisionCore TFP Print Head. This ensures that the ink does not bleed (for those tiny city streets) and that it is durable enough to last a lifetime.
Replicating the appearance and feel of a traditional F-surface darkroom paper, Exhibition Fiber Paper aims to create a beautiful soft gloss finish for their digital prints. A fiber base offers a professional feel with a weight of 325 gsm and thickness of 13 mil, making it the perfect option for galleries and exhibitions. By utilizing optical brightening agents the paper is able to reach a whiteness of 147% and a brightness of 111%. This makes it possible to create prints with deep blacks, suitable for our advanced black-and-white printing.
The Inkjet PrecisionCore TFP Print Head can print even the finest details. It’s Enhanced Variable Droplet Technology allows ink droplets to be as small as 3.5 pl.
With UltraChrome HD Pigment Photo Black and Matte Black Inks, each Urban feature will be an extremely deep black.
Additionally, we didn’t skip a single detail in the design process. We included every major and minor road, highway, bridge, and everything in between, creating something comprehensive, yet minimalistic.
Each Urban Print is extremely eco-friendly! Sourcing environmentally conscious materials, we made it our goal to befriend the ecological world as well as the city skylines. Additionally, we will be printing every Urban Print in-house in order to keep the quality of each print per our standards.
Urban Prints have an archival life of over 400 years, making them a work of art that can be passed down a family line, keeping each generation rooted in its history.
Urban Prints are not ordinary posters; they are photographic-quality flat prints on Fine Art Paper.
Hi! We are a small group of thinkers, dreamers, and city-lovers based out of San Francisco with the sole mission of creating design that inspires. Our small team consists of professional designers, artists, and photographers with working experience in manufacturing, fulfillment, and logistics.
Naturally, San Francisco was the first Urban Print we ever made. We made it to cover up an empty wall in our studio, paying homage to our current location. We loved them so much that we made 3 more, one for each of our hometowns. In the following weeks we began receiving countless compliments, inquiries as to where to find them, and even requests for peoples’ home cities or cities they have visited. Soon, we decided to complete the collection and bring Urban Prints to life on Kickstarter.
We believe that there exists art in everything around us and that it influences our lives more than we can imagine.
We’ve chosen three different sizes for Urban Prints.
This wide range of size allows you to enjoy Urban Prints in any environment.
“If you like what you see in the photos, man you’re in for a treat when you see the real thing.”
– Eric L. | UC Berkeley Design
“The Simple Things Design team sent me four of these, one for each room in my house. I love their simplicity – every time I look at one of them, I’m reminded of the great times I had traveling throughout my life.”
– Andrew N. | Modern Traveler
“I’ve moved around a lot throughout my lifetime. I’m originally from Japan, moved to Seattle, but now I’m in Houston. I have a Seattle Urban Print in my office and a Tokyo Urban Print in my bedroom. They’re perfect mementos of cities I used to call home.”
– Akio H. | Artist
“I love their simplicity. They are a perfect addition to my office and my colleagues adore them!”
– Rina S. | Architect
Urban Print’s minimalism is perfect for any aesthetic! The simple black and white tones make a perfect fit for any environment or background.
We’ve spent incalculable days and nights designing and refining the designs of Urban Prints. We are lined up for printing and ready for production. Our team is eager to quality check and ship each and every poster. Your support is essential to fund our first large print run and ship the Urban Prints from our studio to your doorstep! The funding will assist with the cost of design, printing, shipping, and distribution for this project.
In order to bring Urban Prints to life, we need your support. By not only backing our project, but also sharing it with your friends and family, you will ensure our success. We truly believe that Urban Prints have the capability to inspire amazing energy in any environment they are displayed in. Something as simple as tweeting about our page or sharing our Facebook page will go a long way to the success of Urban Prints.