Today I continued working on my live brief through carrying out some group work. We would be required to begin creating ideas for the signage system to use within castle point so I began carrying out research which would help benefit the ideas process. I looked into existing techniques that are used to help aid blind people when finding their way around such as guide dogs and the use of a cane. I aimed to look deeper though and found that there is actually a chain of hotels which are designed speciffically for visibly impared persons. I also found the use of braille within watches and money. Overall I felt my research was strong but could have been stronger if I had broadend my search. After carrying out the research the group shared what they had found.

The next step was to consider what types of partially sighted people we would be aiming our signage at, for example someone who is fully blind, someone who is partially blind. We were then able to generate ideas for ways to encorporate an efficient system to use. The use of audio was considered as well as infra-red and bluetooth. The bluetooth could be used to send audio information of shop names to an ear piece. A closed loop system could also be used in this way as well. Textures were considered, embossing and also braille. We began working out ideas as a group and decided what categories each shop in castle point would fall into. The six categories were:

- Entertainment
- Electrical
- Supermarket
- Food & Drink
- Clothing
- Homeware
- Books (this was still an uncertainty as to whether it would be included or not)

We found a list of all the shops in castle point from the website and began placing these into specific categories. We discussed how the pillars between each shop would work as a key area for placing our signage systems and began thinking about what imagery to use and what format the signage system would take. We decided that panel could be placed on each pilar to display the signage. The use of an icon for each shop ctageory was then decided on, giving us the task of having to design the icons. The whole of the team was split into groups, with each one being allocated one of the icons to design. My group had to design the entertainment icon and also the books icon. We were still unsure about what icon design to use for the entertainment category and were stuck between using a CD, Music note, Joy Pad, Smiely Face. We begun the design process by firstly creating the joypad, which worked quite well. However after creating the design and presenting to the group we all felt that the joypad could bee sligthly misleading and didn't portray entertainment as best as it could. We therefore decided to go with the smiley face design which overall I felt was most suitable for portraying the category.



1st set of designs presented between the group:


Improved smiley face:



After creating the smiley we then brought this design together with the other designs and decided what kind of style to use througout all of the icons in order to show consistancy. We felt that the blocky, bold style was very effective and decided to go with it. A small amount of group members were then selected to bring this consistancy to the designs. There was also a decision made to include the text relating the shop category below the icons.


Once these icons were designed we began thinking about precise sizes and measurements and how the icons would fit onto the pillars in castle point. We made a decision to make the panels 300 x 300 mm and to use helvetica as the typeface for the text. We also decided on a margin of 40mm all the way round to be implemented. A decision to make the smiley face square was also implemented in order for it to show consistancy with the bold, blocky theme.

As well as helping to produce the icons I also created some imagery of the icons in use within the castke point shoppin centre through the use of Photoshop.


The decision for the types of materials to use was also considered and how the implementation of audio or bluetooth would work. We were asked to carry out some research into light emitting plastics for tommorrow, such as UVT which would work at emitting light with out the need for an electrical source.