Study Task Briefs

Study task 2: Abstract Pictorgrams 
Objective symbols or subjective things

Pictograms – universal, removes language, communicating just with image, no cultural specific 

Developmental photographs, dynamic poses that summarise something subjective

Subjective words

Erco’s system for the Olympics 

Numeric games grid system

Mexican Olympic grid system 1968

Simplified imagery – colour and form basic level

Fragmented/cut up

Column grip

One letter manipulated, repeated 

Amin Hofman 

Printing, stamp, scan, invert  - Neubau Berlin 

Selecting 2 or 3 of the words on the list provided, create an abstract interpretation that can be placed in a grid format and used for wayfinding, whether that be through supergraphics or signage. 

Study Task 3:
Using black lettering to redesign hospital signs

- Design a set of pictograms and a signage systems for a hospital that uses blackletter 

typefaces and calligraphic flourishes as its foundation

- The aesthetic of blackletter must inform the design of these pictograms

- They must be distinctively contemporary and should avoid visual clichés and historical pastiche

- Wayfinding systems tend to be aesthetically aligned to notions of clarity and conciseness, with san-serif typeface usually used next to wayfinding symbols when type is necessary 

- The reduction and purity within these designs are understood as ideals in a modernist system – simplest form, thus by replacing we are able to question the system as a whole 

Outcomes:

- All the arrows and 5 other pictograms  

- Sticking with original sign but changing the aesthetic – completely opposite – would never be used but why

Research:

- VOLK – the people / nation

Used in Nazi Germany

- Fractkur

- 1941 Juddenettern – the Jewish letter

- Sharp, Straight Angular lines – high degree of breaking lines that don’t connect, especially in curved letters – parts don’t meet

- David Rudnick
- Eric Hu

Characteristics:

- Compression – tall and narrow

- Sharp and ornamental finials (the terminal of the letter that tapers / tapered ends) often a swash or ornamental flourish – extended serif etc

- Biting – when a letter with a bowl is followed by another (de/ po) they overlap and the letters are joined by the same straight line  

- High contrast between stoke widths