Week 8 Reading Reaction

Summary

• Metro Design Studio, Metro LA signage guidelines
  The primary advantage of guidelines is to help people work with templates. By using templates, designers can focus the audience on filling the templates in. Templates provide a structure to help people organize information and focus on it rather than the design aspect.

• Hunt Design, signage and master plan for Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy
  In designing environmental graphics, also consider the "flip-through" users. Get the viewers' interest with an interesting image, an intriguing headline, and a short, crisp, declarative writing. It's important that the interpretive signs are of interest to all age levels.

• Bureau Mijksenaar, various transportation graphics
  In creating environmental graphics, designers must think in time see things in sequence. But the audience needs to have a sense of overview first; they want to get a feeling of what's going on or what will happen at the end, before they drill down. Good environmental infographics build up tension by building up information to keep people's interest so they stay attentive.

• Durfee Regn Sandhaus, exhibit design for the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens
  A good environmental information design should have different layers of information. There should be one for the viewers that move quickly through the space, and there also should be another level that goes deeper into the information.

• Poulin + Morris, exhibit design for World Trade Center Visitor Center
  Normally, when designing an exhibit, designers try to create an overarching narrative, something a larger group of people can understand. But with projects where the subjective point of view is very important, people are terrified of losing their individual stories. Therefore, it's critical not to homogenize or generalize.

• Infinite Scale Design Group, exhibit design for Brigham Young University
  Interactive displays would make a tremendous amount of information available to visitors, without making the environment itself overly cluttered. In interactive displays, the additional information is not visible unless the viewer wants to find out more details on a particular information.
  When creating environmental design, it's also important to plan for future expansion and changes. For this purpose, a style guide with guidelines would be a good solution.