Guide to Get Lost
Ricardo Gomes
Guide to Get Lost is an illustration project conceived as a comic, informal and poetic guide to getting lost on purpose. Instead of leading the reader to a destination, it values the unknown, chance, freedom and discovering new experiences along the way.
The guide comes inside an audio-cassette case, a format that recalls a way of traveling before the ubiquity of GPS and digital navigation. The case becomes a vehicle for a nostalgic imagination linked to car journeys, paper maps, unknown roads and the cassettes that went along for the ride.
The publication gathers ten tips combining short texts and illustrations, working as instructions, suggestions and provocations for anyone willing to abandon the planned itinerary. Each tip comes with a song, meant to be heard while carrying out the proposed action, creating an experience in which text, image and sound complement each other. Taking a back road, stopping somewhere unexpected, talking to a stranger or simply noticing what usually goes unseen are some of the guide’s suggestions.
The graphic language follows this idea with a deliberately retro, informal aesthetic, drawing on visual references from road-trip culture and the objects that went with it.
More than a navigation manual, Guide to Get Lost is an invitation to recover a more spontaneous way of traveling, where not knowing exactly where you’re going is not a problem but an opportunity. A small guide for those willing to trade the destination for the experience of the road.
Imprint / Technical Rider:
Year: 2026
Dimensions: 70 × 110 × 15 mm; 22 pages
Materials: Matte coated 100 g — cassette case.
Production and finishing: Digital printing, scoring and staples.
Resources and credits: Original illustrations; Adobe InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop 2025.
Curricular Unit:
Illustration Contexts and Practices (1st year)
Supervising Professor:
Júlio Fernando Dolbeth
Keywords: Editorial Illustration, Nostalgia, Road Trip, Parody
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