Project 3: Where are You Going?
Project Description
For our next project, we're shifting our focus from the page to the sign. Studios often operate across a similar variety of projects: moving fluidly from the type design, to posters, to publications, to way-finding. Our goal as graphic designers is to both solve problems across these mediums and preserve our own aesthetic perspective.
Unlike our previous projects, "Where are You Going?" will ask us to operate less abstractly and instead solve spatial questions with engaging visuals. That said, I want this project to be a bit weird, to express your own navigation through the world.
You will develop an "experimental" way-finding project that directs someone to some place (either literally or abstractly). You will create a Design Tender and make one piece of physical way-finding using this site. The design tender must explain how it could be built, and the final sign will be installed with your final projects at the end of semester exhibition.
Ask yourself:
What is the duration of your journey? Will it be dramatically short or dramatically long?
What material would make sense for your journey?
Where will your journey lead you? What is your destination?
Grading
Your grade for this project will make up 1/4 of your grade for the class. You will be evaluated based on the specific team that you supported and the final two products.
Project Goals
- to further understand the relationship between audience and brand
- to understand the needs of working in a professional capacity
- to develop a design strategy for a way-finding and environmental graphics project
- to build a professional presentation accounting for different tiers of intervention
- to work as a team
- Design Tender:
- The project will provide a full design tender, including possible materials, icons, and colors for signage contractor to develop further. It is intended as the ‘product’ that a company could price and take into production. The final document will include the following components:
- Icon System
- The Icon System team will develop a distinctive and legible icon strategy for use in any possible way-finding.
- At a minimum, you will have legible 5 icons and a typeface that will be used throughout your system.
- Way-Finding Signage
- You will use the principle of "Arrival→Map→Directional→Destination" to structure your Way-Finding.
- You will have 2 signs for your "Arrival"
- You will have 1 Map (this can be potential physical or a totem).
- You will have 2 signs for your "Directional"
- You will have 2 signs for your "Destination"
- You must also indicate how this signage system will be potentially constructed as well.
- Mural Design
- There are several opportunities for graphics along hypothetical corridors.
- Please have this corridor stretch at least 15 feet at 8ft tall.
- Conference Room Art
- I'd like us to design at least 5 framed artworks or wall graphics for potential "Conference Rooms." You will develop a system to be able to quickly generate multiple versions of these artworks.
- Floor Plan
- Icon System
- Built Sign
- You will used your Design Tender make one of your Directional Signs using this site. The design tender must explain how it could be built, and the final sign will be installed with your final projects at the end of semester exhibition.