A country that doesn’t exist

For the school assignment “infographics and explainer animations” I invented a country and the travel agency that sells it. Mysterious Trips invites adventurous Dutch 20- to 26-year-olds, fresh out of their exam year, on a free trip to Netherica: a retro-futuristic nation of hover cars, saucer-shaped towers and a robot mascot.

The catch: every visitor gets a chip behind the ear that links their brain to a superserver, turning them all into one giant processor.

How it works

The poster is a travel brochure told in data. The top half sells the dream: the title, the eurotech coin and the Effenburg Tower. The bottom half gives the facts: 8 million inhabitants, population groups, politics, exports, raw materials, land use, weather and a timeline of kings with pun names like Weir Do and Meg a Bite. Eight illustrated tiles rank the top attractions. Every element is a flat vector shape from Illustrator on its own layer, so each part can move separately in After Effects.

From sketchbook to vector

I started from the target group and a moodboard of 1950s and 60s science-fiction art. In my sketchbook I drew wireframes, coins and diamond-shaped banknotes, with my own notes beside the layout: too busy, less at the top, make “Welcome” bigger. A styling card then fixed the colours and two techno typefaces.

My first version had an AI-generated night city as the backdrop. For the final poster I replaced it with my own flat illustration, so everything shares one style. I animated the layers in After Effects and rendered the video in Media Encoder.

What I learned

The project taught me After Effects and Media Encoder, and made me faster in Illustrator. I also learned to work from wireframes, try a new style and stick to the brief. Feedback focused on typeface and colours, which is where I would take the design next.