The Design Process (Information Board)

I started of my designing by taking influence from some of the more modern looking board designs that I had seen from my research. I was particularly influenced by the black metal style of information board and went ahead to design a simple version of that from my thumbnail ideas on paper.
When mocking the design up in illustrator I was taking a 3 dimensional approach and so I used the perspective too to guide me with angles etc. I also used the gradient tool to add in colour gradients to the surfaces so that it had that more real life effect.

Here is a screen shot piecing the 3dimensional angles together.

and now adding the gradients to give a real 3D finish.

This is the initial concept that i worked up to in illustrator. I used a header board that would hold the Upton Town logo and beneath was a red strip of colour to attract attention from distance.

Upon receiving feedback from my peers I was weary as to the design being too modern. I also had  feedback from a member of the Upton Town council who came in to lecture to take a look at our work, and his response was that it did look too modern and also that it was rather large and bulky for such a small town. I believe that his statement was right as upton has very thin pathways and so having a giant big board placed on one would look totally out of place but also block views get in the way etc.

another design i has was to create an interactive wayfinding board but was given advise the upton do have a budget and something like that would exceed the limit.

Here is what it looked like when I originally mocked it up. The inspiration came from interactive wayfinding in shopping centres where you could search for a location and then a walkthrough map would appear telling you how to get there the quickest way.

I then went back to the drawing board and considered the location of Upton and what kind of board would suit the town. My original was clearly a design more for a modern city.

After drawing more thumbnail ideas I came to the decision that I would design a board that used thin metal panels to hold the information on and they would be held by thin metal poles either side.

I also would change the colour to silver from black as I feel the black colour just looks way too modern for Upton. I decided i would still use a form of attracting the audience by keeping a colour flare onthe upper of the board but i would move it to being on the top of the poles, instead of using a strip underneath the logo panel.

Here is what I came up with. I think that it is a lot more suitable to upton than the original design and also holds certain elements of contemporary design which will be more appealing to younger audiences  as well.

I then set about designing the map for the board.

I drew out several ideas for a map including the use of 3 dimensional landmarks using inspiration from the legible london way finding maps. but I decided that It may be unnecessary for such a small town where everything is within a close proximity.
I went on to draw out a simple 2D map that shows the simplistic elements of roads and geographic features.

This first image shows the basic layout of my first map, I used google maps to draw the map to scale.

I then added in some of the colour zones to get an idea of what it would look like with this in place. It turns out that I didn't like my choice here as i think it just looks too amateur and I think the block-iness of the roads looked horrible. I then went back to consider the next plan to change the map. I thought about the fact that Upton is changing all the time, with shop owners leaving and hopefully new ones moving in but because there is a lot of change I thought that the colour zones might also become out dated and so I though up an idea for my map that allows the zones to be changed.

I would create little coloured pieces that where screwed onto place at the specific locations on the map. Each location of building would have a hole that the colour could be screwed into at designating that building to the type of place that it is eg. food and drink, business, shopping etc. and if there was none of the above in this location then a plain grey colour would be screwed into place so that it blended in with the rest of the map.

These are the little Cylinders that would be screwed into the board to mark the colour zones

I decided that the colour orange and green could be additional to the colour scheme in my map as there are a fair few pubs and restaurants around Upton that provide a bed and breakfast service so it comes under food and drink (green) and accommodation (orange).

I then used google earths street view to head down the roads proving the location of the different places in upton and corresponding my map to this.

This is the colour zone mapping system that I came up with and this is what i will use as my final.

Now i just needed to add in the extra little elements around the map before finalising it.

I decided that it would be pointless putting down every single house within the maps view in upton as an orange circle piece so I decided to print onto the surface of the map orange grid lines that show housing neighborhoods.

I also drew up a couple of little Isotypes in Illustrator to add places of interest such as schools, library, and police station. These were drawn out using the pen tool.

School Isotype symbol

Library Isotype symbol

Police Station Isotype Symbol

I decided to add a 5 minute walk boundary to the map just as a little indication to how long it will take to walk somewhere.

As this map is based on pedestrians travelling on foot I thought It appropriate to put into the design where footpaths are so that they can be notified by the audience as to where they are situated.

The final touch I made to the map was to add a location marker of the map so that the user can identify straight away where they are and which direction they are facing (Facing the picture on the board to the same way that the audience is facing).

This is the final map design for my Information board. as you can see there appears to be less road than before tht was because on closer inspection google maps was in some circumstances marking driveways as roads and so it looked a little messy but looks so much more tidier now i have taken out all of the extras that are not actually roads.

now with the map complete i went on to put the board together with the town logo at the top and then a set of directional arrows held at about 7 feet high so that they could be seen by passers by even when people are standing at the sign reading the map that would be positioned on the lower panel along wth a legend and a introductory paragraph regarding the history of upton.

This is the final Information board design and as you can see i have met as many of the aims as I was able to hopefully designing a very suitable board.

Here is the information board placed in situ. 

Research

Bando

Here I love the use of colour to identify different zones in the area, I think that it looks clean and simple but the only worry is that because Upton has many of the areas mixed into one another giving the map a form of being messy as colours would have to overlap. I could possibly use something along these lines to zone the areas on my Upton upon Severn map.

I find the dynamic shapes created here to be modernistic due to the outline shapes rather than block filled in shapes. I also think the nice curves that are applied to the corners is a nice contemporary touch.

I have become a fan of the simplistic arrows built from a right angle as I find them to sit nicely when pointing off to a angle as the lines fit nicely to the horizontal and vertical axis.

I think the use of a directional information graphic helps with the audience who know what they are looking for and just need a general direction, but there is always the map below to help the stranger to the areawho needs to find a route to follow.

Chen Zhi Liang

I love the use of isotype imagery here allowing the majority of information to be displayed without text as it is easy enough to understand without.

Ivan Rocha

I like the way that the information board below has taken influence from the shape of the sign. I think that the design of the board is we composed as the screen tilts upwards so that the audience can look down to it rather than having to bend down to read it.

I like the use of the top panel as an attention grabbing element to the sign by using the logo and by using a strip of yellow at a high point so that the user can identify the sign board from a distance and above the heads of people in the crowded streets.

I think this sign has a great heirachy in the layout, It first grabs the attention of the audience with the yellow strip across the top of the board. It then provides directions to landmarks close by with simple arrows and text. Then It follows up with more detailed information below to people who actually end up walking all the way to the sign to find out in detail of where to go form there.

I like the use of situating the board information on a lamp post.

The use of distance away gives the user an estimate time it will take to get to their destination.

Legible London

Legible london is a really influential case study as it provides a lot of information well and efficiently to the user. I expand on my thoughts about Legible london in detail in my London Visit post.

Petr Solokhin

I like the way that the design uses colour zoning to highlight particular areas of interest to the audience to help designate areas.

The shape of the board is cool so that it almost closes in around your head so that nothing is seen at an angle.

The wall signs are nicely designed as they attract attention using the orange band over simplistic white.

Stephanie Gorman

I like the use of the 3D layout but I don't think something like this would work for Upton as it is such a small place with a pretty complex roadway and so adding 3D imagery would probably appear more crammed and busy.

These Information boards don't seem too legible to me and they use a pattern behind the background with kind of throws you off a bit... there's are not really influential to me.

Here is an example of a floor sticker that points tot the direction of the coloured areas.


Primary Research

The recently opened Hive Library in town has information printed graphics on the height of the wall giving directional information on where to find what on each floor inside the building.

The Hive also has wayfinding signage hanging from the ceiling directing people where to head.

A digital form of wayfinding in the Hive is the catalogue search machines, on these you can search for the book you wish and then you will be given the bookshelf number to which you find the matching book shelf to find your book.

Whilst in Barcelona i noticed that the tube system there, takes graphical inspiration from Harry Beck's tube map.

This was taken in inside the Barcelona international Airport. the design of this sign is quite something! It's massive! and used arrows, pictographic icons, text heirachy, colour.

This London West midlands train has a map that resembles the style of the Harry beck london Underground Map

This is a digital wayfinding booth that i found in the bullring in birmingham. You simply find the shop you are looking for and it tells you the route to take to reach it.

This is a map to layout one level inside the Selfridges store in Birmingham. Note the use of little symbols to represent escalators.

This map in the bullring Has a numbering system that links to the picture below so that you can find the shop you are looking for relatively easy.

To gain a better understanding of design I emailed the graphic design agency 'Applied', who designed the Legible london signage system, just to get a little bit better of an idea as to how the design goes forward.

The email transcript is as follows:

Hi Matthew,

Please find some brief answers below – if you would like to explore in more detail, perhaps a phone call or visit here would be beneficial? I’ve also attached some documents you might find useful that provide background to the thinking behind Legible London.

.     1. Is the Legible London signage design influenced by any particular design style/movement? And if so, do you feel looking into design history is a good way to become inspired, even when designing a contemporary style? Legible London’s outline design was influenced by Bristol’s Legible City scheme, along with other good practice in wayfinding design and information clarity. Our lead external design support at the project inception was a company called AIG, now Applied, who designed the Bristol system. For public recognition and consistency with other TfL information, the fonts used in Legible London are TfL’s New Johnston font.

2.     2. Were there specific considerations, perhaps of the audience’s needs, that were very important to the design of Legible London? Legible London has been designed first and foremost as a pedestrian wayfinding system to support mode shift to walking. Therefore, the maps had to be able to convey information that helps those on foot navigate, rather than take the form of an adapted map designed for motor traffic for example. This is why we use features that pedestrians can relate to, such as 3d buildings for visual recognition, pedestrian crossing facilities and ‘heads-up’ mapping for our on-street signs. Layout of the content on our signs is also important. We use the yellow beacon cap for recognition on street, and the maps and street keys are placed at a height where those with mobility impairments, such as wheelchair users, can still use the map successfully.

3.     3. Since the Legible London wayfinding system has been up in the city, have you found they’re to be an increase in visitors who now feel free to roam London without the fear of getting lost? Answering this question is difficult on a city scale, and we won’t be able to address this fully until we have increased coverage of the system. However, we do have some useful evaluation statistics, as below, taken from our prototype and pilot schemes in 2007 and 2010:

ü  91% of interviewees stated that the system should be rolled out across the capital

ü  85% satisfaction level for ease of use

ü  32% decline in feeling lost amongst users

ü  23% increase in wayfinding confidence levels

ü  16% time saving improvement for pedestrian journeys within the Bond Street area

ü  Average of 40 users per sign per hour

We have also used Legible London mapping successfully for travel demand management reasons e.g. 2012 Games. We printed a series of mainline rail termini maps to encourage people to walk from these stations during the Games, to reduce demand for the Underground and Buses. The trial of this programme at Waterloo realised:

•      6% increase in walking journeys from Waterloo

•      16% increase in walking in local area

.     4. Everything today is going digital, and so do you predict that the Legible London system will too, competing with smart phone apps such as Google Maps? We have a prototype ‘digilith’ that uses a combination of static map and electronic map, installed at Canary Wharf. We’re also exploring how Legible london can be used in wider electronic formats, now that the on-street and paper map programmes are progressing successfully.

Regards,

Legible London