Finished Board

These are a couple of pictures of my finished A1 board. I am pleased with the outcome of this module and have put a lot of time and effort into the whole thing. I did have a few problems in finishing the project because it was quite tricky trying to get the images on the A1 board to line up correctly. I should have planned out more accurately the layout of the A1 board. Here is the finished product:

Designing the signs in Illustrator

 This is the wall sign. It is a development from one of my initial drawings. I like the fact it has text and image on it because it makes it more appealing and attracts people more. One of the main purposes of a sign is to be prominent so people can see it with ease. I used the designated red heritage zone colour for consistency.

This is the finger sign. After considering other initial designs, I wanted it to be nice and simple in the end. Once again the colour zone is indicated as the shopping zone colour and the sign points to the high street where most of the shops are.






Illustration is a new program to me, so learning it was quite tricky even though it has a similar layout to other programs I've used like Photoshop. I had trouble getting some of the tool to work like the gradient tool to make the pole look metallic.

Initial Sign development

In order for me to create an effective sign, I had to get started on doing sketches so I did quite a few sketches and put a lot of thought into some of them. Here are some photos I took of the sketches:

This was the first set of sketches I did. There are a variety of type of signs. Wall mounted, floor, standard finger signs. I quite like the one in the bottom left and the one in the top left because the one on the bottom left has a lot of detail visible on it, you can add text and image to it. The top left sign is nice and simple and gets the job done.

This sketch is not actually a sketch of signs. These are some initial sketches of the information board I must design. I was just working out how to position all the elements like the maps, images and history.

This sign was a bit of a jump forward. I wanted to emphasize that  the town was a river town so I design a sign in the form of a boat. Not only that but this sign potentially has multiple purposes. It has room for a bench (hence a person sitting on it in the picture) and room for a flower bed and also room for a bin. The flag of the boat would be the sign. I put a lot of thought into what the production of this boat sign would be like. If this sign was actually made, the prototype would be made with wood for the actual boat (maybe even a second hand boat) this would be painted to preserve it. The mast and flag/sign would be made of a metal. The point of the flower bed would be to deter people from climbing up the boat. I like this design a lot but I think it may be a bit too complex to mock up a design.

 Following the river theme, I thought of how I could make a wall sign. So I thought the actual sign could represent a river with a model of a man fishing on top. The text would be implemented in to sign too.

I thought the top of this river sign could have interchangeable models on it like presents for directing to somewhere (i.e. the presents would be pointing to shops and the man fishing would be pointing to the river)

 This is a variation of a river sign. This one is a finger sign. The same idea of having a model on top of the sign has been added to this idea.

This is the sign from different viewing angles.

Now I need to decide which one of these signs would look good as a final prototype and then get started on finalising the idea.

More wayfinding research

In order for me to get a better understanding for how the final signs should be designed, I had to do some more research about wayfinding. So I did research on wayfinding in London and came across the project called legible London which has aimed to make London an environment easy to walk around as alternative to the underground, driving and public transport. The London tube map is widely recognised as one of the best wayfinding systems in the world and more than 45% of people have been using the tube map as directions for walking as well as navigating the underground. The impetus for Legible London was the Olympic Games in 2012.  AIG and Lacock Gullam developed a prototype sign system which was implemented in the West End in November 2007. This was followed by three large pilot schemes in 2009. I found this information at: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/microsites/legible-london/

Research about Upton

In order to work on the map and understand the subject matter I needed to research Upton and it's history, buildings, town layout etc. One of the best ways for me to learn the layout of the town is to look at some maps of the place. This is also a good idea because I have to design a map for the information board I need to make. For all the other information I needed to learn about, I had a look at the main Upton website which can be found here: http://www.upton.uk.net/

The brief and getting started

Okay so I now have the brief. I must design prototype signs for Upton to improve its ease of way finding. I will start by researching the most effective way finding signs. I did some searches on Google to look at all the best signs and the most important signs. Here are a few examples:



There are a huge amount of signs all over the world but the most consistent ones I keep encountering are the ones that are on a pole and point to the general direction of the place in question that you want to go to (they are called pole signs). Because these particular signs are the ones internationally used consistently, I have reason to believe that they are the most effective signs for way finding. They do the job but aren't particularly stylish and could do with improvement. I will try and improve on this type of sign.

From Sunlight to Sugar: Photosynthesis

This is my finished info-graphic showing the process of Photosynthesis. I wanted to go for a simple and straight to the point design which would appeal to a younger audience. The kind of audience learning this process in school. Therefore I used pencil crayons for the colour. I used bright orange for the arrows so they stood out. If I were to improve this design I think I would have made it more clear of the order of the events by maybe adding number or more obvious arrows.