Invisible Creature
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) released a set of "travel posters" depicting various cosmic destinations. This poster shows Mars as a habitable world. The posters -- the brainchild of The Studio, the design and strategy team at JPL -- are a way to celebrate the discovery of planets. JPL visual strategist David Delgado says of the designs: "All of these far off places are hard to get to, but they are there. The immediate thought was, if we could go there someday, what would it be like?"
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Once every 175 years Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune align. NASA's Voyager mission was designed to take advantage of this alignment in the late 1970s and the 1980s.
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Enceladus' icy jets have a pivotal role in creating Saturn's E-ring. Other findings from NASA's Cassini mission show strong evidence of a global ocean and hydrothermal activity beyond Earth.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
Ceres is the closest dwarf planet to the Sun and the largest object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Could the planet be a future rest stop enroute to Jupiter?
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
There's no place like home. NASA's earth science missions study our planet as a whole system -- to understand how it's changing.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
This poster imagines the "best" vantage point on Venus, to spot the Mercury Transit -- or when Mercury comes between the Sun and Earth.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
Titan, Saturn's largest moon, has a surface shaped by rivers and lakes of liquid ethane and methane. In this depiction, visitors could paddle through the Kraken Mare.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
Jupiter's icy moon Europa is believed to conceal a global ocean of salty liquid water twice the volume of Earth's oceans.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
In 1995, scientists discovered 51 Pegasi b. The exoplanet is about half the mass of Jupiter.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
HD 40307 g is an exoplanet located 42 light-years away. Its gravity would be at least twice as strong as it is on Earth.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
The extrasolar planet Kepler-16b is billed as the "land of two suns" for the twin orbs that shine down on it.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
Kepler-186f orbits a cooler, redder sun. The discovery of Kepler-186f was a step in finding worlds with similar characteristics to Earth.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
PSO-J318.5-22 belongs to a special class of free-floating planets, called rogue. They wander alone in the galaxy and do not orbit a parent star. The planets glow faintly from the heat of their formation until they cool down completely.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/Stefan G. Bucher
Is this the most incredible light show in the solar system? Jupiter's auroras are hundreds of times more powerful than Earth's. This poster depicts the Jovian cloudscape.

Story highlights

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory releases space tourism posters

Invisible Creature were commissioned to design three of the images

Design choices and elements for the vintage-inspired posters are shown below

Gallery: 14 posters of cosmic destinations

CNN  — 

What will space tourism look like centuries from now? “Visions of the Future” – a set of 14 posters released by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) – provides an imaginative take.

All of the exotic travel posters can be downloaded for free here.

In one image, two travelers fill up their water bottles at a rest stop on the dwarf planet Ceres, the “last stop until Jupiter.” Another advertises scenic boat rides through Kraken Mare, a sea of hydrocarbons on the surface of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.

JPL visual strategist Dan Goods explains that the images are intended to celebrate the diversity of planets being discovered – and to increase the desire among the public to be curious about the universe.

“Imagination is so critical to creating a future you want to be part of. Many of the things we are doing today were imagined by artists and science fiction writers decades ago. These destinations are all actual places that we know about, and one day, perhaps humans can go to them in the future.”

Goods says the images were rooted in scientific plausibility, and that illustrators worked with scientists and researchers. “It was really important to us that we worked with the technical community to make sure what we were showing could someday happen.”

Three of the posters were created by Seattle-based design and illustration studio Invisible Creature. Influenced by post-war WPA propaganda and vintage travel posters, one of the prints shows what it would be like to visit a Mars colony, complete with cultivated crops and water.

courtesy invisible creature
Three of the posters were created by design studio Invisible Creature.

Riffing on European voyages of the past, in another design, the studio invites would-be tourists on a ‘Grand Tour’ – a once-in-a-lifetime alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune; and the explosive geysers on Enceladus.

“Nowadays, we use photography for tourism ads. But old (illustrated) travel posters have whimsical takes on locations. Your mind kind of gets lost in the art,” designer Don Clark of Invisible Creatures, told CNN.

Space vacations? NASA posters explore the possibilities

“That’s how we approached these posters, to capture that charm, optimism and hopefulness, and this whole idea of wanting to go on these trips.”

Here, Clark explains design choices and elements found on three posters by Invisible Creature.

Ticket to Mars’ historic sites

“The graphic approach to this poster was modern and fun. There’s the wheel of a Rover above the astronaut’s head. There’s ships flying into the frame to the left – that’s what transportation looks like once we’re on Mars. There is also water and agriculture.”

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“If you see it up close, it feels more distressed. It has the effect of a screen print, like the trapping or each layer of colors don’t line up perfectly.”

“The Mars Curiosity Rover appears on the left. We used the same line thickness from the Rover’s legs to show the rock formations. The poster mixes reality with the future ideals of space travel.”

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A Grand Tour to see planets align

“Every 175 years, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune align. If you were to travel at that time, the idea is you would hit them in one shot.”

“We wanted to show motion using the comics and stars, as well as the use of color. We’re not using a ton of colors, but there’s a lot of depth and dimension created by overlaying the colors.”

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“JPL gave us overarching ideas of what they wanted to see, but gave us a lot of creative freedom. I played quite a bit with ship styles. I didn’t want them to be too detailed. Once I narrowed the core shape for the ships, I added windows to fit with the art of the stars around the planets.”

100 ‘Breathtaking Geyers’ on Enceladus

“This is a much more WPA style poster – like the famous ones from the 30s and 40s showing hot springs and geysers spilling out of the earth. In space, icy jets from geysers are propelled off the surface of the moon Enceladus. You can see Saturn in the background.”

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“The idea is the man in the photo is taking a final tour in what he’s created – this weird orb ship that he’s built to travel around.”

“The range of colors we used were darker. I wanted to evoke the feeling that this is the guy’s last trip.”