November 27th 2010: I'll Be Dead, But Never Dying

Quick smash up of a tattoo design, obviously not drawn equal sidedly, with colour, decent text or anything... but it's a rough idea of where things would be. Like it. Frank Turner Hardcore. Yeyah.

Work Experience 05/05/2010

Today contained much less talking than other days and a fair bit more action. We had just from half 9 until half 4 to get everything rapped up (it is currently 14:54 and I've just finished my allocated contribution). Everyone was assigned different tasks to go about during the day. The first task was to achieve some research on plastic/signs/braille companies. After a lot of searching I discovered a company which will create our laser cut/embossed signs on plastic with braille and colouring. Everything we need. I emailed them a specification for our signs and as a rough quote they stated a cost of £21 each plus VAT which with 80 signs comes to around £2000. My other task for today was to collect all of the artwork for the signs and create PDF's for them. I also had to add braille type which I downloaded from the internet. This was a lot more difficult than it should have been due to mass confusion as to file format, lost files and such other issues. A laser cutting has also been arranged for a mock up of a design (currently in progress as I write this) so that the client can have an idea of what the signage will look like. Here are the sign designs.

Work Experience 04/05/2010

Today was spent coming up with ideas for signs to help the blind & visually impaired navigate their way around Castlepoint shopping centre. Some time was spent brainstorming and we decided that overall the solution should be approached from three fronts. For the visually impaired it would require a set of large, simple & easily recognisable images. And for the blind it would require some audio & texture qualities. Texture being the addition of braille to the signage, however after research we discovered that only about 20% of the blind can read braille and so audio would definitely be required. The concept would be to include an infra red sensor to the front of shops which would send a signal to a headset of sorts, which would be handed out to those who needed them from the shopping mobility centre. The infra red signal would give the name of the shop and perhaps what it sold to the user. After discussing options for delivery we moved onto design, first categorizing the shops that there are at the shopping centre. We came up with 6: Electrical, Clothing, Food & Drink, Home-ware, Supermarket and Entertainment. A lot of discussion was had about the different icons once they were brought to the table. Some needed editing, some needed re-doing completely. My section to design was Food & Drink. Design Progression:

We decided that the backing should be a light green as the black of the icons would stand out from it well which would be necessary for the partially sighted to see it well. The colour would also stand out well from the surrounding area which is mostly grey metal/concrete.









This cup was decided against at committee.











The pantone reference we chose was 374C.

Type is added. Sans serif is required as it is easier to read.

Measurements for final layout:
300mm x 300mm
40mm margins
95pt Helvetica Bold (to sit on bottom margin)
Icon to start from top margin (allowances for tweaks)