follow up how become to final design

I sat down again and was looking at my work, re-thinking how it going to be a final piece!!! 

following from the book call visualizing research and my own idea, that I have to do.

1. Looking at Type and typography by creating a chart with the selection of typefaces to be used, together with all specification, like size, word and letter spacing, positive and negative spaces and typography details.

2. Materials to be used by making a chart with samples of all the basic materials to be used

3. Selection of colours. creating a chart of colours are available to be used on typface and find the best one, also the concept behide the colour selection can be shown with a chart as well. 

4. Layout with samples of each layout.

5. Symbols, Pictograms. A chart with an overview of all the art work.

6. Position of signs in elevation with the standard heights of all architecture elements.

  

Looking at colours contrast again

After I went to St'Pancras last month for observation and tested some of my design with was colour and type, also interviewed with the passenger in the station. there are some coloure that I have to change some of colour to fit in the architecture and environment. from the pictures below are the different tone of "blue" one of black colure . Black colour is the another oportunity colour to use in this station.

Inteview by e-mail with Bruno Maag

I've been writing email to Bruno Maag, asked some advice from him because he was type designer for St'Pancras project, and I got some really useful adivices from him about type. please see below>>> 

1.      St  Pancras is a complex, crowded and also very large station. In
term of type design,    how did the Barlow font influence you? And
what was your inspiration using this type for St. Pancras station?

Barlow is based on one of our own fonts - Stroudley. Stroudley was originally designed for signage purposes, hence the tall x-height and relatively narrow letter width, to allow for a higher letter count. For reasons of legibility, the font was designed with humanist features, eg. open character shapes. For Barlow the font was slightly more condensed to allow an even higher letter count on the limited amount of space on signs. 
 

2.      From my observational research, I found that you used bi linguine
languages for “Departure” and “Arrival” between English and French,
what made you decided to use this method just for these words?  And
why didn’t you use this method with other information such as
“entrance” or “exit”?

We were not involved in the actual implementation of the typeface, just the font design itself. So, really I have no control over wording etc. It is my guess that this decision came about to assist primarily with the Eurostar passengers, to acknowledge the French destination. St Pancras, of course, also serves UK mainland rail services and I think for this reason a single language only approach was applied. Again, you have to talk to the actual station designers or operators about this. 

 

3.      Do you think this station could benefit from more use of colours for coding?

It's a very busy and convoluted train station. I must admit that the few times I was there I had a hard time finding some of the local train services. Finding Eurostar is no problem but finding the Thameslink becomes a serious challange because I don't think that service is signed very well at all.

I am not sure that colour coding would help. There is also a practical issue to that as all of the rail services are run by private companies, each with their own corporate colours. To make colour coding effective for the various services, you'd have to co-ordinate a huge amount of opinions and brand guidelines.

4.      In terms of hierarchy, how did you manage the information used for
the signage around the station?

Again, we were not involved in the actual design of the signage. So I cannot comment on that.

I hope this helps.
Kind regards
Bruno

-- 
-- 
Bruno Maag, Managing Director, Dalton Maag Ltd
Unit 107, 245A Coldharbour Lane, London, SW9 8RR, UK

useful links

A case study by Jenny Reising :  about Schiphol Airport signage. http://signweb.com/index.php/channel/7/id/1378

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 Sander Baumann web blog, including information design, signage, typography and other useful things 

 http://www.designworkplan.com/

pictograms, got the final design

come from the concept of looking back in 21 st century, in that time St' Pancras is the one of London victorian station and very well known. I m looking on that period and see how people wearing, styles and another identity to apply into my design. 

 

design and design

I keep designing and exploring my ideas for waiting to get a feed back from supervisor and then go to test at St pancras in London next week. Many design come from many sketches.

looking at colour schemes of St.Pancras

from the concept of St. Pancras Blue and also integrat with the modern architecture stlye.

 

Typeface Legibility for Older Viewers with Vision Problems

I got a very useful informations about how typography impact the older viewer who is experiencing vision problems typical to that age group? Are certain typefaces more suitable to the aging eye? 

http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/typography-and-the-aging-eye 

Foreign users and visitors

Language is the cornerstone of every signage system. Architects often claim that the facilities they have designed will speak for themselves. That might very well have been the intention; how ever, inmost cases, there will be a huge language' they use is only comprehensible to their closest colleagues. Nobody else really understands it. Ultimately the building will have an entirely differently present in the design and construction phase of the project.

Illiterate or foreign users might not completely understand the language used on signs. Research has revealed that this group of users do still use, in some way or other, the written information on sign. A simple written coding system can be understood by most, despite illiteracy or unfamoliarity with a certain language Pictograms try to overcome the limitations of ileracy and langauge. This claim is only true for pictigrams that users have become familiar with. like men's and ladies toilets, phones, wheel chair entrances and information counters.

2.   Visitores, especially first-time visitors, generally have a little knowledge about the environment. They are for the most part entirely relying on the signage to find their way around. General facilities, such as toilets, wasrooms, phones and cloakrooms, should also be made easy to fins for visitors

[signage design manual, Edo Smitshuijzen, Lars Muller Publishers, 2007]

type area

by laying out two main line of letters to gives the line spacing. The distance between the letters and the top of the sign will be correct automatically.

[ref. signage systems and information graphics, Andreas Uebele, Thames & Hudson,2007,Lomdon]

mapping down

In order to find the concept throughout the design I have to summarize all of information’s and researches that I have been done since PGC. Playing with information and find the key idea to become a design concept. From my researches I thought that how design can represent the identity of the place by using colour or materials etc. I began to link between the history of St. Pancras and the image of the station nowadays which is very modern train station in the world. I m finding a gap between old and new style, how these can be my concept.

KD LAB show reel

one of my favorite animation maker 

about St. Pancras

St. Pancras was first opened to traffic in 1868, the largest iron structure in the world until 1994 in developing the proposal for St.Pancras as an alternative to King's Cross, the government's decision to propose a new vision for St Pancras in 1994 and in 1996 provided outline planing permission for the CTRL.

The reference design contained outline proposal for St. Pancras station are using the basic for the environmental and also necessary to draw up some assumptions about how the project might be constructed, in order to assess its effects on the environment, required an elemental re-ordering of internal spaces, influence was critical, as was the creative rapport the established with English heritage.

The objectives to the design of St. Pancras was drawn by the London and Continental Station and Property (LCSP)

• To simplify passenger movement throughout the station.
• To maximize passenger convenience by providing a functional and user friendly station.
• To promote the railway business of LCR.
• To integrate the station with surrounding area.
• To maximize the business opportunities with and around the station.

One of the things that I have found during my observation and my research is the way for choosing the colour scheme for the St Pancreas; it is all port’s coloure of the sky. It has to be said that on a sunny day the blue comes into its own and blends into the colour of sky, it would be appropriate if the blue was maintained and became known as St. Pancras Blue. (The Transformation of St. Pancras station, Alastair Lansley, Laurence King Publish, London, 2008)

testing:: to finalize the choice of suitable letters

Testing the font styles, size and varying widths, on the actual size (200 pt for minimum size), to find a suitable font. I tested by printing out on the paper at full size. Viewer distance between 5 and 10 meter. From the result, 6 of 10 people were preferred the Helvetica Neue 85 Heavy (not capitals) / word space 25 than other fonts.

 

  

rough Idea 1

I got some idea during I was reading a book call Life between the building, it was talked about the different of time during the day, a number of people are using a space has changed all the time, which I can identify a user who using the station on that times, Obviously in the morning between 8.00-10.00 am most of passenger are students and middle age group or working people, more crowded and the speed of passengers are walking quickly than the normal hour and between week day and week end. So by those I come up with an idea by using different colures in a different time during the day, used the sense of colour to refer the group of people and the movement.

observation and researching the identity of typeface

am starting to look at the variation of lettering, reflecting of history and the changing tastes of lettering to find an available design concept, how lettering integrated with the environment and architecture.

Within any travel network, lettering plays several key roles. It can be used alone, or with other visual elements as part of the identification of a company or service, but it can aalso serve to guide people around the station themselves.

(signs, lettering in the environment, Phil Baines & Catherine Dixon, Laurence King Publishing,2003)

also looking at the physical of the station to understand what type of lighting, materials and surrounding context for example retails and cafe', how effected with the sign. These are important for signage design.

testing:: comparing different widths of letter

I decided to test the font’s style in different widths of letters for helping to finalize the choice of suitable size; this is Helvetica Neue 85 Heavy which is very popular at the moment.
My aim was to experiment, which size and which font’s style is worked for passengers to understand easily and accurately. This is my first step testing and experiment the ideas. As a result it wasn't helping me to understand how to use the letters and font size in signage project, because I felt myself need more researches.

Live project, Final day

These is sample of our work after 2 weeks in this project, finally we decided to do a new student hand-book, which contained an unofficial information such as where you can get a good pub in Nottingham, how to get a cheap foods and even which is going to be in this year.

book:: Life between buildings by using Public space

I got a book call “Life between buildings using public space” by Jan Gehl. The book asked concern for the people who were to move about in the spaces between buildings, it helped me to undertanding for the subtle qualities, which throughout the history of human settlements, had been related to the meeting of people in public spaces. This book it quite useful for Architecture and Urban design student to be carefully treated.
There are some chapters in this book might good for me to understanding and it can be adapting for my project for example in chapter 1 Three Types of Outdoor Activities. Most interesting for my it is on the chapter call “The senses and communication” because human senses is an important prerequisite for environmental graphic designing to understand the function of senses such as Seeing or Hearing and to understanding all other forms of direct communication and the human perception of spatial condition and dimensions.

Live project Day 1

The collaborative project to work with other 10 students in difference MA subjects, create and deliver in two days a publication in any format (book, magazine, podcast, web blog, etc), on non fictional subject or area relating to students and student life at NTU. in context of life and culture outside NTU.
In my group there are student from Fashion Maketing, Photography, Textile, Fashion Design. we have been talking about the idea of what we are going to do, and we got some point of views from international students, how they feel when they arrived to Nottingham City and NTU.

project outlines

My project proposal it call “Multifunction of way finding and signage for transportation” which is about an environmental graphic design. I propose to address the behavior of the passengers and find out how my design communicate them and benefit the community by using a concept of way finding and space which can be defined in the behavior of passengers flow of movement.

start and introduction

Welcome to my Blog, This is my first step to do a blog for record of my MA Graphic Design journey, it will be including researches, observations, trip and tutorials. it might be a great way to share my ideas and my research which is going to do through this year and help me to look back what I have been done at the end of course.

My background comes from Interior designing knowledge which was 5 years in University and 2 years in professional practices. Graphic design is very interesting notion and challenges me to find out the way how to merge between my own background and graphic design context throughout the design. These are the reason why I’ve chosen to study graphic design.
These pictures below are some of my presentation slides about my background experiences.

(I do apologist if you miss understanding my English, I will revise and correct again as soon as possible) thank you