UNIT IV EXPERIMENTATION AND INSPIRATION FOR THE DESIGN PROCESS

UNIT IV
EXPERIMENTATION AND
INSPIRATION
FOR THE DESIGN PROCESS
KONGU ENGINEERING COLLEGE
(AUTONOMOUS)
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND DESIGN
P.GOWSIKRAJA M.E., (Ph.D.,)
Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science and Design

UNIT IV - EXPERIMENTATION AND INSPIRATION
FOR THE DESIGN PROCESS
1.Importance of experimentation and inspiration
2. Lateral thinking
3. Inspiration for design
4. Editing data for inspiration
5. Inspiration from world
6. Visual mapping
7. Case study.

1. Importance of experimentation and inspiration
♠Experimentation in all of its forms, new technologies in
ways for which they were not designed, or taking
inspiration from a variety of sources, including those
outside the subject of graphic design, is valuable and valid.
It is through this experimentation that designers produce
unforeseen results.

♠Why is experimentation and inspiration important?
♠Student project by Sophie Garwell: D&AD/Diesel competition entry, 2011.
Why is experimentation and inspiration important?
♠Experimentation sits at the heart of the creative process. As designers we look for
new ways of doing, making and ultimately communicating information and ideas.
♠The desire to experiment is fuelled by curiosity:
“we look, we see, we respond to the world around us; our situations and
circumstance, our likes and dislikes, our interests and experiences all shape and
influence our work”.

♠we are experimenting through asking questions and seeking answers.
♠We can’t expect to instinctively ‘know’ the best way to resolve a problem, so we ask
questions of the brief and we explore and experiment to find the most appropriate
answers. This is an essential part of the design process;
♠It can lead to exciting and unexpected solutions, into new territories that challenge
the established or expected methods of communication.
♠It can lead to new ways of doing and thinking, and new and exciting design
directions and opportunities to engage and communicate with an audience.

♠ The willingness to explore and experiment also helps you establish and define your own style and beliefs, and to find
out who you are as a designer.
♠ The work we admire from our peers captures something unique.
♠ It has personality, individuality and it goes beyond the norm; it pushes or challenges the established boundaries
and presents something new and unexpected.
♠ As individuals, our experiences, opinions, inspirations and influences are all different. These will shape our
approach to the way we design.
♠ Where we live or grew up, the political, social and economic climate,
our beliefs and opinions, the music we like, the artists or
architects we admire are all sources of inspiration and should be
embraced when we are engaged in the creative process.

♠Case study1:
Title: Student project by Sophie Garwell: D&AD/Diesel competition entry, 2011
Problem History:
♠This project was created in response to a Designers & Art Directors’ (D&AD) competition brief
set by the well-known brand Diesel to illustrate two songs by an artist chosen by the student.
♠The idea was to explore new and imaginative ways in which design and illustration could be
integrated into the music experience.
♠Song Track: Sophie selected two tracks she loved, ‘Festival’ by Sigur Rós and ‘Animal
Arithmetic’ by Jonsi.

♠The differing formats of the books reflect the structure of each track; the compositions
of the visuals attempt to capture the mood, volume, rhythm and pace of each piece.
They explore the possibility of the visual representation of music.
♠Sophie mapped out the pitch and volume of the songs, paying particular attention to
the instrumental layers. She used this as the basis to create an appropriate visual
palette, experimenting with different colours, textures, materials and surfaces to use
within the piece.
♠She comments, ‘The first half [of the song] is very slow and subtle, so I took soft
textures to mirror the map of movements I had made.
♠The second is much more beat-orientated with layering of instruments.’

♠The final pieces reflect the points of difference within the music and between each
track.
♠A single page represents 30 seconds of music in visual form; when ‘read’ at this pace
while listening to the music it creates a multi-sensory experience for the audience.
♠This illustrative interpretation of musical data is the result of extensive experimentation
and exploration around two pieces of music that Sophie found particularly
inspirational.
♠‘Of course design is about problem-solving, but I cannot resist adding something
personal as well.’ Wim Crouwel (b. 1928), graphic designer

Sophie Garwell’s response to a
D&AD/Diesel competition brief:
‘The books are a visual
description of the music of Sigur
Rós and its emotive dynamics.
The songs are built up with many
layers of instruments, pitch and
tempo, creating a unique
atmosphere, which I translated
into a visual format.
The books follow the path of the
music from start to finish in an
attempt to be a visual
accompaniment to such rich
musical qualities.’

2. Lateral thinking
♠Lateral Thinking
♠Student project by Stephen Woowat: Urban First Aid, 2004
♠ Psychologist Edward de Bono conceived the term ‘lateral thinking’ in 1967. In simple terms it involves
thinking beyond the obvious solution, sometimes termed ‘thinking outside the box’.
♠ He summarizes the approach as, ‘you cannot dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole
deeper’. By this he means that changing direction cannot be achieved by putting more effort into one
approach.

♠Lateral thinking means not just accepting the pieces of a puzzle you have been
given but seeking to change them.
♠It is a technique used to shake people out of their complacency to produce something
unique instead of coming up with predictable solutions.
♠Lateral thinking is important in information design as there is a perception that
dealing with large amounts of data is relatively boring.
♠The ability to visualize this raw data and place it into a visual form that demonstrates
relationships or differences can change the audience’s understanding of the subject.

♠Lateral thinking can be used through the process of visual exploration. In this phase
designers experiment with different media, materials and ways of presenting the
raw information.
♠During this process, creatives move beyond initial concepts and explore avenues
outside of the obvious choices.
♠This can result in more innovative solutions to the problem.
♠By sketching and prototyping, the designer can investigate various methods to present
the message, using diagrams, grids, typography and imagery.
♠This allows the information designer to compare methods in order to select the most
appropriate technique.

♠It is during this phase that many designers ‘play’ with the visualization.
♠Play means different things to different people, but psychologist Bruno Bettelheim
defined it as ‘freedom from all but personally imposed rules (which can be changed
at will) by freewheeling fantasy involvement and by the absence of any goals outside the
activity itself’ (‘The Importance of Play’, Atlantic Monthly, March 1987, p. 37).
♠Playing can result in happy accidents and keep the approach fresh and vibrant. It can
involve playing with images by making collages or montages or using unfamiliar
tools and design techniques.

Case Study: Student project by Stephen Woowat: Urban First Aid, 2004
♠Lateral thinking is the Urban First Aid project by British graphic designer Stephen Woowat,
produced when he was a student.
♠The brief was to communicate information about roads in the city. Stephen used lateral
thinking to liken the transport infrastructure of a city to that of a human circulatory system.
♠The ring road has become the main arteries in the heart of the system.
♠Using this simple metaphor, the reader understands the importance of roads in the city as
they provide links to the outside world, bringing in valuable commodities such as food, as
well as exporting waste products.
♠If this system gets clogged, the circulation of goods slows down and causes major problems.

♠The visual solution is presented in the form of an installation, which uses the floor plan
to show the road structure.
♠On top of this, Stephen has used the vernacular of medical graphic design to diagnose
key areas of congestion and prescribe solutions such as a bypass or rail networks to
alleviate the problems.
♠The idea that any potential problems could be diagnosed and dealt with equates town
planners to doctors, as they can both alleviate problems and repair them through
intervention or surgery.
♠This way of presenting the information helps the viewer to remember the message: it is
a clever idea, presented not just as facts and figures, that engages the audience.

UNIT IV EXPERIMENTATION AND INSPIRATION FOR THE DESIGN PROCESS

Stephen Woowat’s Urban First Aid project, 2004,
which uses lateral thinking to liken the ring road
around a city to that of the circulatory system of a
human heart.

3. Inspiration for design
♠Inspiration for design
♠Student project by William Cottam: Revealed, 2010
♠Student project by Holly Langford: Local Heroes, 2010

♠Designers are inspired by a multitude of things: it could be an environment they
have experienced, such as the city they live in or their travels abroad;
♠it may be a building, a piece of architecture, an artist and their work or their
philosophy and beliefs, a particular cultural movement, a belief or ideology, a piece of
music, poetry or the written word.
♠It may be old signage, tickets collected from around the world, or sweet wrappers.
In short, inspiration can be found everywhere!
♠We absorb our surroundings both subconsciously and consciously.

♠As designers we should be looking, recording, collecting, drawing and
photographing the things that surround us. The things that capture our interest
may become the inspirations that drive and inform our work.
♠When first studying Fine Arts at the Academie Minerva in Groningen, the Netherlands,
legendary graphic designer Wim Crouwel said he was more inspired by the building (the
first modernist building in Holland) than by the work that went on within it.
♠Crouwel is known for the ‘architectural’ use of space in his design work, and there is no
doubt that this early inspiration shaped his subsequent work. In the late 1950s he read
the book Grid Systems in Graphic Design by Josef Müller-Brockmann, and this too
inspired his use of the grid in his posters.

♠These are just two examples of the many influences on his work. Müller-Brockmann
also looked beyond his own field for inspiration: ‘What pleases me is that I have always
sought what is better, that I have still remained selfcritical, and that I am still
interested in things outside my own field. My library is the expression of my curiosity.
♠ I would advise young people to look at everything they encounter in a critical
light and try to find a better solution.’
♠Josef Müller-Brockmann, in an interview with Yvonne Schwemer- Scheddin, ©
Eye magazine, 2001

♠US designer David Carson, who is best known for his influential magazine designs, is
also clear on the potential sources of inspiration:
♠‘My environment always influences me. I’m always taking photos and I believe the
things I see and experience influence my work. … I think it is really important that
designers put themselves into the work.
♠No one else has your background, upbringing, life experiences, and if you can put a bit
of that into your work, two things will happen; you’ll enjoy the work more and you’ll do
your best work.’ David Carson, Layers magazine, 2007

♠The world that surrounds a designer can shape his or her ideas.
♠The agency Idiom in Bangalore looked to Otl Aicher’s 1972 Munich Olympics
pictograms and to Sanjhi, a form of Indian folk art, when they were commissioned to
design the pictograms for the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi.
♠The shape of the logo for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, created by design studio
Tátil, was inspired by the Brazilian environment; it is based on the famous Rio
landmark of Sugarloaf Mountain.
♠Look around you, think, respond, and be curious. Being open to the influences and
inspirations that surround you is essential to creating work that has a sense of
personality and individuality; something that can make the work distinct and unique.

♠To give you some examples of how
this awareness can inspire and drive
the direction and content of projects,
we show the work of William Cottam
and Holly Langford, two recent
graphic design graduates from
Nottingham Trent University.
♠These illustrate how a personal
interest in or response to an issue
can provide the basis for interesting
and compelling visual
communications.

Student project by William Cottam: Revealed, 2010
♠While walking around the city centre of Nottingham, William began to notice the number
of CCTV cameras located in a very small area.
♠On further investigation he discovered there were very few locations where one was not
being watched within this area, yet people seemed unconcerned – or maybe they were
just unaware.
♠Many people assume that the reason for the cameras is to reduce crime; however,
evidence indicates that CCTV is not effective in reducing or solving crime.
♠So who is watching us and why? Shouldn’t modern citizens feel trusted to go about their
daily lives in a law-abiding manner? Isn’t camera surveillance just another form of
spying and an infringement and erosion of our civil liberties?

♠William decided he should use his skills as a graphic designer to initiate a response to
this issue and create a campaign to stop the expansion of CCTV.
♠He experimented and explored the best way to communicate this information.
♠After trying and testing several routes it was clear that using a well-known area within
the city as the basis for his campaign would offer the most effective and compelling
content as well as providing a meaningful context for the final communications.
♠Many people would have walked, shopped or sat waiting to catch a bus without
realizing that their every move was being watched.

♠A poster mapping the location of CCTV cameras within the area was created; the visual
language of existing warning posters was utilized and new versions produced carrying an
alternative warning message to the public.
♠Finally, a set of ‘opinionated postcards’ were made to reinforce the message of the campaign.
♠William experimented in his design process to find an appropriate and balanced visual
language and tone to communicate with.
♠Measuring the right tone and selecting the most effective formats to carry a message or
information is a vital part of the overall design process.
♠In many instances this can only be established through active experimentation with
materials, media and formats, and testing how these different approaches communicate with
the desired audience.

♠Student project by Holly Langford: Local Heroes, 2010 This project was a campaign
created in an attempt to bring together urban communities in the East Midlands, to raise
awareness within the community of individuals who have acted in challenging situations
rather than turning a blind eye.
♠Its ambition was to tackle the attitude of ‘someone else will help’. The campaign set out to
communicate directly with the audience in their environment.
♠The sites selected were in urban areas where the street lighting was poor. Holly had
discovered through her research and exploration the effectiveness of good lighting as a tool to
deter crime.
♠As a result the project developed two purposes: ‘To take the message to the street and create
an impact, I projected stories of local heroes’ great achievements into the areas where they
live.

♠This idea was based on the fact that street lighting is more effective than CCTV at fighting crime.
So by projecting the stories they are inspiring hope and are also protecting the area.’
♠ Holly created the Local Heroes brand with the hope that it would inspire people, improve the
sense of community spirit, ownership and strength.
♠The brand would extend across other platforms as it progressed, using both direct mail and an
interactive interface to engage people.
♠The direct mail would be an annual publication that would celebrate ‘Heroes’ and their stories,
bringing the local heroes to the attention of a national audience.
♠The proposed website and app would offer people the opportunity to post their stories. The
interface is live and charts each story’s location and details on a national map.
♠As time passes, the online community grows and the map fills with locators that can be clicked to
gain access to the story; it is a ‘good news’ site, an online beacon bringing positivity and hope.

This project was the result of a great deal of
research, experimentation and development in
Holly’s final year.
She tried out numerous ideas before settling on
this approach. Holly went out into the local
community with projectors and set up the
environmental graphics to see if the idea of using
light as part of the message delivery would work.
She tested out her ideas and analyzed and adapted
the outcomes according to her findings.
Her use of media is driven by experimentation;
she uses established channels to communicate
where appropriate but also exploits the potential
of new media alongside this to ensure effective
delivery of the message.

♠So far we have looked at student projects within these pages, but this does not mean
that these are the only projects where inspiration and experimentation play a key role!
♠The practices we begin as students will continue throughout our careers as
professional designers.
♠If we maintain the willingness to look, explore and experiment with ideas and
approaches to our work we will continue to evolve, and new ideas may be found or
inspired by a multitude of things.

4. Editing data for inspiration
♠Creative use of data: Nicholas Felton
♠The importance of trying out ideas
♠Trying out ideas: Tanya Holbrook

♠Data is collected from a variety of sources. our experiences are documented through
data that is collected on the most mundane of items, such as our mobile phones.
♠How many calls we make, their duration, the number of text messages, many
photographs, all go some way to recording our daily lives.
♠The data tells stories about us. It is the job of the information designer to edit and
interpret these stories visually for the audience to clearly understand.
♠The designer filters out the unnecessary information and concentrates on finding
the interesting points, so that the story is communicated succinctly without any
interference.

♠Information designers explore and understand data through visualization. By
presenting facts, figures or statistics in space rather than as numbers or text, the
viewer finds it easier to understand.
♠Humans have an innate ability to recognize patterns and relationships. When
information is depicted visually, these relationships and patterns become easier to
identify.
♠The designer has the task of disassembling the data, analyzing it and then
reassembling it in a simplified form. It provides the visible through graphic abilities
the designer employs, such as navigation and abstraction. The facts and the
interrelationships between them become transparent.

♠ Creative use of data: Nicholas Felton
♠ Felton documents personal events, such as social relationships, travel, food and emotions for each year, and
presents them as a printed document.
♠ This began in 2004, when Nicholas produced an end-of-year report called ‘Best of 04’. In it included some
statistics about his year, such as how many air miles he had travelled.
♠ The first annual report: The detailed several categories he thought would be of interest to family and friends.
♠ These included his photographs, music he had listened to and books he had read throughout the year.
♠ By 2007 he was documenting his habits scrupulously. Online services such as Flickr and Last FM kept records
of his photographic experiences and listening habits, while his computer calendar kept records of meetings and
events.
♠ Along with information from free sites about weather and maps, Felton compiled a huge amount of information
about his daily life.

♠He then input the data into spreadsheets to enable comparisons and patterns to be
identified within the material.
♠Once the focal points had been identified he began the design phase. He says: ‘My chief
concern is that the finished graphic should be highly scannable and easily digested.
♠Relationships should be as direct and unadorned as possible’ (IDN magazine interview,
2008, vol. 15, no. 4, p. 32). In his 2010 annual report, Nicholas documented his father’s
life after he had passed away.
♠It was compiled from the physical ephemera, such as calendars, slides and other
artifacts, in his possession. Nicholas has since published a stunning report for
2010/2011.

♠Web link: http://feltron.com/FAR11.html

The importance of trying out ideas:
♠Once the data has been collected and edited, the information is used to generate ideas.
♠The designer attempts several concepts in order to communicate the data.
♠The designer will often explore structure, image and typography, developing grids, styles
of imagery and typographic elements, which will help the clear communication of the
message.
♠The more ideas generates, the greater the ability to compare their effectiveness and
analyze the possibilities to ensure they are fit for purpose.
♠Sketching is one of the most immediate ways for a designer to explore their ideas by visually
building and refining them.
♠Some designers keep sketchbooks to develop ideas; others work on separate sheets of
paper.

Trying out ideas: Tanya Holbrook Tanya
♠Holbrook is a designer for Fallon in London. While studying for her degree in graphic design she
completed a project that mapped her carbon footprint for the year 2007.
♠This project looked at the journeys she had undertaken within that year, such as walking, driving
and flying. While developing the project, Tanya tried out several ways to interpret the data she
had collected.
♠It had to be analyzed and edited to pick out the most relevant facts and statistics in order to tell
the story of her travels for the year.
♠Certain pieces of information appeared too detailed, others not detailed enough.
♠The comparison of local, national and international had to be made and then some way to portray
the data coherently to an audience had to be found.
♠She analyzed the mileage from her cars, looked at the travel tickets she had kept and also looked
at the work of other designers.

♠She went through the data and edited it, looking at various stereotypical ways that
most designers would use to depict it. The process of editing can be very difficult.
♠She is trying to select facts, figures or statistics that indicate relationships or facilitate
some sort of comparison.
♠Just telling someone you have travelled 20,000 miles in a year in your car doesn’t
mean much until you realize the national average is 8,000 miles.
♠The data needs to be set in context to make it meaningful.
♠The sketchbook Tanya produced for this project is interesting because she has
included her references from contemporary design along with drawings and notes on
the data that helped her arrive at her final solution.

In her sketchbook, alongside a map, Tanya looks at destinations and relative distances travelled
locally and develops icons for mode of transport.

♠ The development work continues by looking at radial designs to map out
and categorize daily routines and the amount of time spent walking,
driving, running, etc.
Radial design exploring the time spent
undertaking different activities in a day.

♠Tanya’s final design, which demonstrates the various destinations visited in a year, the
mode of transport, frequency of visits and amount of time spent at each one.

♠Tanya experimented with how much of the map she could show without it becoming the
focal point of the information.
♠By reducing and simplifying the map, Tanya was able to suggest distances by looking
at the relative positioning between destinations and their orientation to each
other.
♠She decided to use directional lines to suggest the pathways and used different
thicknesses to denote frequency.
♠All of this was arrived at through a process of trial and error in the sketchbook,
constantly analyzing and evaluating the visuals to make sure they communicated
the key information clearly and consistently.

♠The final poster is produced in black, white and shades of grey and uses minimal
text. Tanya has commented that although she likes the poster aesthetically, the process
of designing it was far more interesting and challenging.
♠The project shows that there are stories hidden in seemingly mundane data. She
realized that she had driven a half-mile stretch of road between her home and
college an awful lot.
♠It made her more aware of her habits and behaviour. Today, devices such as the Nike+
Sportswatch GPS are tracking, recording and presenting data.
♠Through sensors, the watch records calories burnt, location and distance moved. As a
result it can tell our stories automatically.

5. Inspiration from world
1.Taking inspiration: News Knitter
2.Some ideas on finding inspiration
3.Some ideas on experimentation
4.Guidelines on designing with information KISS

Inspiration from world:
♠Information design is no different from other design disciplines:
♠it is a creative endeavour that has a rational outcome.
♠Inspiration is key to any creative activity, but it does not come about through divine
intervention.
♠Designers naturally tend to be curious individuals; this curiosity can be beneficial as they
can take inspiration from areas other than graphic design.
♠If you keep an open mind you may find that the past and the present offer a rich source
of inspiration for designs.
♠Art, film, culture, music, architecture, sculpture, furniture and fashion all influence how
we view the world. In turn, they provide us with visual shapes, forms, colours, textures,
type forms and organizational structures, if you look closely enough.

♠Taking inspiration: News Knitter
Taking inspiration:
♠News Knitter One such project that takes inspiration from an unusual source is that of
News Knitter.
♠This piece of data visualization by Mahir M. Yavuz and Ebru Kurbak at the University
of Art and Design in Linz, Austria, started as a quest for an alternative medium to
envisage live data streams.
♠They realized that text and imagery designs on clothes were quite common. They
asked themselves, ‘How can ephemeral information, which is generated, absorbed
and evaluated by real people on a daily basis, be materialized, attached back to
the physical body and enter urban daily life?’

Diagram showing the process of the News Knitter
project. This details gathering the data, analyzing
and generating the patterns from it, and finally
sending that information to the knitting machine
to produce the garments.
The garments on display at Ars Electronica
Festival in Linz in 2007.
The exhibition consists of ten unique sweaters
that are produced as sample outputs of the
News Knitter project.
Using online global or local Turkish news from
a particular day or a time period generated the
patterns of the
sweaters.

Garments being produced in Istanbul
using Shima Seiki’s computerized flat
knitting machines
Sweater showing a typographic pattern, generated
using the point size of the text to show a story’s
popularity among global news items.

♠Sweater showing a graphical pattern,
generated by the popularity of news
items and particular keywords. The
frequency of these keywords denotes
the colour and scale of the shapes
used to depict them, in this case, a
plus sign or bar.

♠ Some ideas on finding inspiration:
♠Look beyond your own subject area for inspiration (architecture, art, music, philosophy,
nature).
♠Be aware: engage with politics, culture and news.
♠Know your subject: designers past and present, the way they work, their attitudes, opinions and
approaches.
♠Record your experiences: listen, photograph, collect, observe and explore.
♠Travel: inspiration can be found on the journey, not just at the destination (international or local); a
ticket (the paper, colour or type); a conversation with a fellow passenger; the type of people you
observe getting on or offthe bus at different points; how and where they sit and what they do while in
transit; the environments you travel through; the signs/typography you see outside the windows.
♠Sometimes the mundane can provide great inspiration and fascination.
♠Most importantly: be curious.

♠Some ideas on experimentation
♠Be open-minded and willing to explore diverse design directions. This may lead you to discover
new and interesting ways to communicate, as well as shaping your own practice in
unexpected ways.
♠Explore the potential of materials, media, formats and technologies within your design
process.
♠Get your hands dirty; don’t just talk or sketch what you might do: do it!
♠Don’t be frightened of trying out new things; working beyond your comfort zone will ensure
your practice evolves and improves.
♠Try out different approaches within your design process; ideas can be enhanced and
communication improved by the selection of the most interesting and effective media, materials and
format.

♠Guidelines on designing with information KISS and FOCUS
♠KISS: Keep it Simple, Stupid (KISS). This guide is about simplifying
elements and only including the essentials. This is so the audience is
guided to the important data and not confused by any unnecessary
information.
♠FOCUS: Select a particular element or elements to provide a focal point.
That way it is easier for the viewer to decipher the message.

♠If possible, visualizations of data should:
Have a clear purpose, such as a description, comparison or contextualization.
Show the data and allow the audience to think about what the data means and not
how it was made.
Don’t distort the information or mislead.
Permit the viewer to uncover several layers of data from a broad overview to
specific detail without confusing.
Let the user compare different facts or statistics.
Allow the audience to remember the data or facts clearly.
Appreciate the user’s intelligence.

6. Visual mapping
♠Project: Innovative approaches to information design research
♠Design: Dr Alison Barnes
♠Overview
♠Approach
♠Outcome

♠Project: Innovative approaches to information design research
♠Design: Dr Alison Barnes
♠Overview:
Dr Alison Barnes is a practising designer and senior lecturer at the University of Western
Sydney in Australia. She completed her PhD at the London College of Communication in
London in 2011.
♠Her thesis focused on the potential of interdisciplinary collaboration between graphic
designers and cultural geographers, and in particular the communicative possibilities
of typography and graphic design when used in relation to the understanding and
representation of place.

♠Alison’s work centres on exploring notions of everyday life and place through print-
based graphic design.
♠By everyday life, she means the kind of daily routines or things that we tend to take for
granted.
♠For her, these seemingly inconsequential events or items are fascinating.
♠Whether it is a favourite ornament on a mantelpiece or the recycling of unwanted
household goods, there is always a story waiting to be revealed.
♠These stories, and the work that develops through them, are not driven by a
commercial perspective, but by Alison’s own personal interest.
♠However, that is not to say that she would describe her work as ‘self-indulgent’.

The design of the grid and the setting of
the typography have been developed
conceptually.
The grid is modular, designed in response
to the notion of a collection being the sum of
several parts.
the text is set in small blocks that begin to
fill the page.
At the end of the book, the text begins to
break out of the grid, resembling a
collection of separate, disconnected lines,
to reflect the idea that on death, possessions
that once held meaning more often than not
simply revert to becoming inconsequential
junk.

♠ Cultural probes are designed to provide
inspirational responses from participants,
rather than the kind of information one would
get from a traditional survey or questionnaire.
♠ Here, the pack includes a disposable camera,
questions on postcards, a journey log, a
recipe sheet and a memory sheet.
♠ However, the pack can be designed in relation
to each project, so the contents can vary.
♠ The fact that the tasks are often quite creative,
or more interesting than simply answering
questions on a sheet of A4 paper, engages
the participants in the research and makes the
researchers seem less remote.
The packs are not designed to be sent out in
great numbers; this type of research is not about
statistics and averages, but about more personal
insights that can trigger an interesting idea for
the development of the design work.

♠Approach:
One of Alison’s key motivations is to explore the potential within graphic design to communicate
information or stories in ways that engage the reader in an interactive space of exploration.
♠She is also keen to develop a broader idea of what the design process encompasses, and
specifically the research aspect of that process. As a student, one is encouraged to research
the brief, especially at the start of a project.
♠However, often that goes no further than using methods such as searching the internet or
library for information about the subject matter, the target audience or other examples of
design work that relate to the aesthetics or style of product or artifact needing to be designed.
♠While Alison does use secondary methods like these, she also likes to ‘get out there’, to site
herself within the research, which enables her to develop a different perspective.

♠By walking, photographing, taking notes, or just talking to people she builds up a
range of different types of information, which she then uses to develop content for the
work.
♠These types of methods are often used in other subject areas and could be broadly
defined as ethnographic.
♠As a graphic designer, she finds crossing borders into other academic territories, like
cultural geography for example, particularly interesting.
♠She likes to take on new ideas and research methods from outside of design and
interpret them from her position as a graphic designer. In a sense, she becomes
something of a bricoleur, someone who constructs their approach using a range of
diverse research methods specifically chosen to respond to the particular situation that
is of interest.

♠Stuff also includes envelopes that
contain ephemeral artifacts that the
reader can handle;
♠for example, old photographs, stamps,
cigarette cards and handwritten cards
and letters.
♠Handling these objects creates a pause
within the process of exploration of the
book and enables the reader to reflect
not only on these objects, but also on
similar objects that may relate to their
own possessions and memories.

• A book is essentially a collection of
bound pages, and with limited-edition
work it is easy to explore the potential
of non-traditional materials.
• Example, Stuffincludes perfumed
drawer liners as pages, which bring a
multi-sensory dimension to the
reader’s experience, and glassine paper
to protect the full-bleed photographs.
• These pages reference the type of
materials one might find in an older
relative’s house, which could be used
when storing precious possessions in
drawers or compiling a traditional
family photograph album.

♠Outcome
♠For Alison, information and inspiration can be found everywhere, even in the seemingly
most insignificant places.
♠The challenge is to work with the methods and processes of graphic design in such a
way as to make the everyday as fascinating for the reader as it is for her; to reposition
the ultra-ordinary as the extra-ordinary.
♠That is the power of information design.

♠ Interaction can be created through the use of
interesting formats and binding. Here the pages are
French folded, which creates a hidden pocket in each
page.
♠ These have been used to position captions that relate to
the photographs on the outside of some of the pages.
♠ The photographs are seemingly ordinary as far as the
reader is concerned, but for the owner they are deeply
meaningful possessions that contain important
memories.
♠ The reader, therefore, has to literally search beneath
the surface of the image to reveal the meaning that
each item holds.

The book includes four different types of
texts, each set in a different typeface or
type style.
The reader has to navigate through these
texts;
they can be read separately, or drawn
together to build a bigger picture of our
relationship with our possessions.
The two main texts, an essay about stuff,
and a participant’s life story, are set
perpendicular to each other so the reader
has to literally shift their position when
reading a different viewpoint.

Everyone Ever
in the World,
poster designed
by The Luxury of
Protest (see pp.
170–73).

7. CASE STUDY
♠Inspiration for the design process
♠Project: Wayfinding and signage for Great Ormond Street Hospital, London
♠Design: Landor Associates, London

♠Overview
♠Approach
♠Outcome
Overview: For more than 150 years, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children
(GOSH) has been one of the world’s leading children’s hospitals, offering the highest
levels of medical care.
♠Over that time the hospital has grown to encompass many buildings across one
central London site, all of which make it very difficult for visitors, patients and
staffto find their way around.
♠Due to a major redevelopment program that took place in 2012, GOSH felt it was the
perfect opportunity to review their wayfinding and signage strategy.

Approach: Hospitals can be lonely, scary places, especially when you’re a child.
♠It can be hard to find your way around, and even harder to find a place to belong.
♠The brief was to provide a theme, naming solution and guidelines for the floors and wards, to aid
wayfinding.
♠It needed to interest children of all ages, families and staff and have long-term appeal.
♠The hospital’s philosophy, ‘the child first and always’, was at the heart of the strategy.
♠There needed to be a theme that everyone could relate to, yet would be fun for children.
♠With naming, the designers had to be creative while adhering to strict criteria – no negative
cultural connotations, not too abstract, and be simple for non-English-language speakers to
pronounce.
♠The designers drew inspiration from the natural world – a theme that was already established
within the hospital and one that gave the team the richness and diversity to create a captivating
environment.

♠ The team faced the challenge of producing a scheme that succeeded in
the practical sense but that also appealed to the visitors/patients (the
audience) who had to navigate the environment. T
♠ The patients at GOSH range from newborn to 18 years old.
♠ Landor needed to create characters that would appeal to very young
children – simple, recognizable shapes – but that also had an
attitude and an aesthetic cool that would appeal to the older age
group.
♠ To ensure that the animals had enough character to be unique to
GOSH, but offered plenty of opportunity for people to project their
own thoughts and stories onto them.
♠ In the end the team developed some rules of thumb:
♠ distinctive silhouettes that would work well as signage icons
♠ They enjoyed adding small details and behaviours to the characters
that would engage older children and adults.

♠Great Ormond Street wayfinding system, showing how the habitats are used on the
ascending floors from oceans on the lower ground to skies on the fifth floor.

♠ Pictograms showing the various animals used for the
ward names.
♠ The use of imagery means that visitors and patients
can find their way easily without having to rely on
text.

The combination of traditional
wayfinding system and
expressive illustrative elements
makes the
environment pleasant as well as
functional.

♠ In 2008, Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) commissioned Sable to implement a new Landor-inspired
environment and way-finding strategy based on the natural world. The objective was to design engaging,
distracting and disarming environments that would assist, in some small way, in alleviating the stress and fear
for visiting patients and families.

UNIT IV EXPERIMENTATION AND INSPIRATION FOR THE DESIGN PROCESS

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