icelandic tourism board – tourist safety signs – unpublished

art director/designer: rob story, writer: dana satterwhite, illustration: val mayerik

in 2016, my friend dana satterwhite had a project for iceland tourism that he asked me to help with. evidently tourists were unwittingly venturing into some dangerous areas and meeting their maker in some very gruesome ways. getting pulled out to sea by some surprisingly big waves, burned up in hot volcanic ash and falling into deep crevasses that are hidden by thin layers of ice are a few of the ways these happy-go-lucky vacationers were getting taken out. there were signs warning of the dangers, but because they were very pc with regard to their design, they were ignored or missed by the masses. dana suggested something a little more “hard hitting.” i was thrilled because that type of thing was right up my alley. as is usually the case though, the tourism board thought the designs were too hard hitting and that they would scare people. hmmmm. ok. so they didn’t get produced and the darwinistic cycle continues. oh, well. technically these “signs” shouldn’t be classified as posters, but i just didn’t have another category to put them in. had they been implemented they probably would have been more like a metal sign posted in dangerous areas. also, it’s worth noting that the illustrations were done by val mayerik. val is the guy who created howard the duck for marvel comics. he also spent a lot of his time working on stories for creepy, eerie and vampirella magazines back in the 70s. fitting.