Illustrated Maps
C'est La Classe!

Geography as a Learning Tool

Loescher Editore, an Italian educational publisher founded in 1861 and specialised in language learning and school publications, commissioned a series of illustrated maps for their French language course book C'est La Classe! Each map needed to work simultaneously as an educational tool and as a visually engaging illustration — functional information design that could hold the attention of secondary school students.

The challenge was to translate complex geographic and cultural data — festival locations, city information, francophone distribution worldwide — into clear, charming visual systems that matched the playful, colourful tone of the language course while remaining informationally precise.

Flat Illustration Meets Information Architecture

Each map was built in Adobe Illustrator using a consistent flat illustration language: a warm parchment background evoking classic cartography, custom-drawn architectural and cultural icons for each location, a red and navy colour palette referencing the French tricolore, and a clear typographic hierarchy distinguishing place names from descriptive labels.

The icon system was designed to be immediately readable at textbook scale — each city or location identifiable through a single representative illustration rather than generic pins. Paris has the Eiffel Tower and the Seine; Strasbourg its cathedral; Lyon its gastronomy. The maps read as illustrations first, data second.

Paris · France · Festivals · Le Cliché

The series includes five maps covering different scales and subjects: the Top 15 Places to Visit in Paris, the France Cities Map, the Festival Map of France, the Francophone Countries Map, and Le Cliché sur les Français — a playful infographic exploring French cultural stereotypes as a language learning exercise.