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design matters: Pictograms are visual messaging

design matters: Pictograms are visual messaging: "we use symbols for communication verbal and non verbalVisual symbols help to define a message"

Pictograms are visual messaging

we use symbols for communication verbal and non verbal

Visual symbols help to define a message

The Sign Design Society Event: Defining a City

Tuesday, April 6^th, 2010 Guest article by Hayley Branston - Wayfinding_UK

‘Defining a City - How an informed choice of materials can influence a design and define the values of a City’, an event by the Sign Design Society.

Background Information

As part of Transport for London (TfL), London Buses is responsible for securing the provision of bus services throughout Greater London in a safe, efficient manner, while encouraging the use of buses and public transport. Surface Transport Infrastructure Development are responsible for the design and development, specification, installation and maintenance of the supporting infrastructure within Greater London. As the main point of contact with passengers, bus stops in London currently total over 19,000.

Introduction

Mike Wolff, Chairman of the SDS, introduced Ivan and highlighted that the society often discuss the graphic design and strategy of wayfinding systems, but talk less about the design of products. That in mind he was very keen to get the event underway.

London Buses - The Facts

Ivan began his presentation by putting the scale of the London Bus project into perspective. Every weekday over 6,500 scheduled buses carry around 6.25 million passengers on over 700 different routes, amounting to over 1.7 billion journeys a year. He was also keen to point out that the first use of the iconic roundel was the 19th-century symbol of the London General Omnibus Company; its usage on the Underground came later.

History of London Buses
Illustrations of old shelters showed how little the identity had changed over the years and demonstrated how forward thinking London were in a period hung up on embellishment. Ivan emphasised the importance and influence of Frank Pick, head of the London Underground in the 1910s and 1920s and of the newly merged London Transport in the 1930s. Frank was instrumental in establishing the world’s most progressive public transport system and an exemplar of design management. Ivan went on to explain how Frank’s vision influenced the design of London bus products, including those we see on the streets today.

Creating Successful Products
TfL are a well known brand and the legacy of their products has a huge impact on defining the city. Their products and use of materials also help define the values of the system. Ivan identified his three intrinsic factors for creating successful products:

• Aesthetics
• Appropriateness
• Economics

Even in the early 19th century, London Transport realised the importance of these values.

“The test of the goodness of a thing is its fitness for use. If it fails on this first test, no amount of ornamentation or finish will make it better; it will only become more expensive and more foolish.” - Frank Pick

It was clear that Ivan and his team design products with a clear focus on ‘Appropriateness’. They adopt a cradle to grave approach to design and Ivan listed key considerations in their design process:

• Who will use the product?
• What will the product be used for?
• How long does the product need to last?
• What possible impact does the product need to withstand? (vehicles, pedestrians, weather)
• How often will the product need to be updated?
• How will the product be maintained?
• 
  
• In particular when looking at materials:

• Do the individual materials proposed work together?
• Are the materials used sustainable?
• Do the materials work within the surrounding environment?
• What is the life span of individual materials?
• How will materials be disposed of at the end of the products life?

Current Product
Using a full scale replica of a bus stand located at the front of the room, Ivan described in detail the design of the current product used at bus stops.

Click to enlarge the busstop details.

Many of the components are easily switchable. Ivan demonstrated how using a tiling system, bus stop numbers could be changed and moved almost like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Examples of timetables, route maps and network maps helped show how London Buses have simplified information to make it easier for bus stop users to answer three key questions:

• Where am I now?
• How do I get from A to B
• How will I know when I get there?

Click to enlarge the map busstop details.

A good example of this simplification of information is the timetable, where individual times have been omitted and instead only first and last buses are listed along with the general frequency of buses throughout the day.

Example: Transport for London Journey Planner.

Where other systems fail
One reason other systems have failed is the lack of continuity. London bus stops extend beyond central areas and cover all routes in Greater London. Ivan indicated that passengers do not just want information about where they are travelling from, but when they get there, they need the same consistently presented information. People need information near their homes and local areas, not just in the centre of the city.

Ivan also pointed out that many systems fail because they do not own their products. London Buses design and build their products and own the intellectual property rights. This allows TfL the freedom to change manufacturers without having to reinvent their products. Continuity of the brand is maintained and London Buses can continually work on evolving their products.

Questions and Answers
The session concluded with a questions and answers forum. Unsurprisingly many of the questions focussed on manufacturing methods and material choices, but several of the questions were centred around brand identity and the roundel. A debate began on the use of the roundel and whether overuse was diluting its visual impact, a subject I am sure we all could have continued discussing at length, but time was pushing on and Mike sadly had to draw the session to a close.

Conclusion

I have been to several events organised by the SDS, but this was one of my favourites. The presentation was filled with facts, history, illustrations and physical examples. Ivan is obviously very knowledgeable on the subject and passionate about his job and this came through in his presentation.

I would like to thank Ivan, Mike, Michelle and the SDS for another great event.

• For more information on the SDS visit: The Sign Design Society

ID Signage for Retail Centre

To be different

Concepts

Signage and Wayfinding
Airports

Airport signs & wayfinding systems are guides to show visitors the way. From finding the toilets, gates, tranfsers or even the coffee corner, signs are needed to show the way. Airport signage design is not a easy task and creating a wayfinding system in a airport which will have to guide thousands of visitors takes a in-dept case study of the visual environment, travellers stream, detailed prints of the building and much more. In this photo showcase I’ve collected images of Airport Signage from cities all over the world, using the photo website flickr.

Düsseldorf Airport Signs

When designing signage for a Airport or a other public building you have to take a good notice of the visual surroundings the signage will be placed in. The backgound colors of walls and windows, the amount daylight let in the building, the lighting and more environmental elements are important when designing signage for a aiport. In a visual crowed environment it is important that signage design stands out to its background, for a maximum effect. Use a color system with not to many variations and be consistant with the color usage. Think about using illumnated signs to enhanche the readability of the signage and always use mockups of the signs to test if the signage is working in the visual surroundings.

Color, typography design and use of pictograms

Design high contrast signs to ensure good readability and legibilty of the signage. Colors that work well are a dark background with a light colored text and pictograms. For example a black background with white illuminated lettering will ensure a high contrast which has a good readability from a distance. Other commen color combinations are a yellow background with black lettering. For typography use a sans type like FF Info by Erik Spiekermann or Frutiger by Adrian Frutiger. Use a font that have a high x-height which will increase the legibility of the signs. Use only one font in all visual communication levels of the airport signage. For international airports it is vital to use symbols to indicate the facilities in and around the airport, always strengthen the symbol with written text in the native language and perforably in English language. This will ensure that most of the visitors can read the signs.

Dusseldorf Airport Signs FF InfoPhoto credit sabrinak

Typeface FF Info

FF Info

Designed by Erik Spiekermann and Ole Schäfer, FF Info Collection offers a large variety in type weights and pictogram sets with a good legiblity suitable for airport signs.

Arrow design

Arrows are one of the most important design features of a wayfinding system for airports, with a pointing arrow you will be able to guide visitors to their destination. Choosing a arrow within a design can make or break the design, don’t over due the arrow but gently incorporate the arrow into the sign in balance with type. Recently I’ve released a arrow collection to use in a design. Download the 56 free arrows as a Illustrator vector file here.

Sign design using a grid

Always use a grid to design Signage & wayfinding systems in order to maintain balance and flexibility in the design. In a future article I will go in dept by explaining how to design signage using a grid.

For more information and photographs
go to  http://www.designworkplan.com/design/airport-signage-photo-inspiration.htm

the EYE

Why Apple is the New Master of Craft

By Adam Richardson - June 28, 2010

Whatever you may think about Apple there is no denying that they continue to set new standards for craft. Craft? Yes, that seemingly old-fashioned word that many confine to quilting, scrap-booking and other pursuits often disparagingly categorized as women's activities. My alma mater, the California College of the Arts, dropped the word craft from its name years ago, feeling that it was dragging the image of the school down. But craft as a concept has made something of a comeback in recent years, and no-one in the mass-production realm is doing it better than Apple.

That's no accident. It's the result of enormous amounts of hard work and financial investment, much more than most companies are willing to stomach. Apple's head of design, Jonathan Ive, said in a recent rare interview with design site Core 77 about the iPhone 4:

"A big part of the experience of a physical object has to do with the materials. [At Apple] we experiment with and explore materials, processing them, learning about the inherent properties of the material--and the process of transforming it from raw material to finished product; for example, understanding exactly how the processes of machining it or grinding it affect it. That understanding, that preoccupation with the materials and processes, is [very] essential to the way we work."

High quality craft comes about from an interplay between a material and a person, whether they be a woodworker, metal-smith, designer, engineer, or production-line worker. Good craft comes from intimate familiarity and ongoing hands-on manipulation of the material and the forms it can make, not from abstractly visualizing the form as is often done through CAD renderings. They can be highly photorealistic, but often not usefully informative to the design process as they lack tangibility. Ive goes on to say:

"The best design explicitly acknowledges that you cannot disconnect the form from the material--the material informs the form. It is the polar opposite of working virtually in CAD to create an arbitrary form that you then render as a particular material, annotating a part and saying 'that's wood' and so on. Because when an object's materials, the materials' processes and the form are all perfectly aligned, that object has a very real resonance on lots of levels. People recognize that object as authentic and real in a very particular way."

Forty years ago, design philosopher and master wood craftsman David Pye argued that design is always limited by budget, not technique. The ideal form promised by superior technique, he said, will always lose out to affordability, and therefore design will always be compromised. What is remarkable about Apple is that they have navigated around this paradox to a large extent. Obviously they don't make the cheapest computers around, but they have brought a incredibly high level of quality to everyday products at prices that many people can afford and an increasing number are happy to pay. It used to be that you had to pay tens of thousands of dollars for an object with this degree of precision, whether it was jewelry, a car, or a fine watch.

Apple has done it by taking techniques and materials that everyone else uses for small-batch prototyping, and scaled them up to be mass-production ready, such as how it carves out aluminum blocks to create the shells for everything from iPod Nanos to MacBook Pros to the new Mac Mini. They work closely and over the long term with a small set of suppliers to hone the techniques and get the costs out, rather than doing what everyone else does which is to shop around every year to different vendors, always hunting for the lowest price. Apple isn't afraid to "single source" a technique, technology or material from a vendor if it gives the right affect and advantage, while other companies avoid like the plague being locked into single vendors.

And of course Apple has famously fanatical attention to every detail that starts at the very top with Steve Jobs, and percolates out to the rest of the company. Apple is certainly not unique in this if you look across all companies in all industries, but very few - if any - of their direct competitors have it.

Nature is the ultimate designer

Good design does not always equal good business. But good business outcomes—especially when the goal is to create new sources of value in the world—are most often achieved through a well-structured design process that is more holistic and inclusive than the notion of good design.

All of the energy fed into the debate about the value of good design to the world of commerce would be better spent building ways to make holistic design a routine activity in business—and society. Here are three ways to get us there:

Stop Treating Design as A Noun

Why Design Matters

Good business outcomes treat design as a holistic process that pulls in savvy marketing and research, as well as smart ideas, says IDEO's Diego Rodriguez

By Diego Rodriguez 

www.businessweek.com/innovate/.../id20100127_150531.htm  

Design Dynamics

What design dynamics is required to design a car?

Design sets the tone for visual dynamics with your audience. Wayfinding is an application of information and visual messaging.