Design Process - Wayfinding System Rational

Proposal

The idea behind my sign system will be to create a series of direction treasure hunt posters that will guide the audience to the location of a 90’s themed event in the Leeds Corn Exchange. People that have been used for inspiration include: David Carson, David Rudnick and Steve Hulme as they all have been involved in 90’s culture including design aesthetic and music. My wayfinding system will address subjectivity through creating my own designs and using colours, which I deem appropriate for the context. It will also address objectivity by adding directional sign systems that are universally recognized.

When comparing my ideas to the opinions of Wim Crouwel and Jan Van Toorn and their debate, I would say that I agree with Jan Van Toorn more, as Wim Crouwel believes subjectivity is something that should not stand between a designer and the audience they are communicating to, where as Toorn believes that subjectivity is something essential to the designer in conveying their ideas and opinions to the audience.

In terms of the visual language included in my designs, I will explore the aesthetic and the subject typographically. This will mean that I will need to look at designs from previous artists to get an understanding of the type of posters I will be designing. In terms of the requirements for the posters, they will need to reinforce the idea of 90s culture, including reference to rave culture and acid house music. The idea behind these treasure hunt posters was to mimic how warehouse raves in the 90s would be held secretively and the only way to find them was to ring a telephone number for further instructions on where to go. The narrative to these posters will be that one poster leads to another in a series of clues to where the venue of the event is. To do so I will be creating a collage of imagery, taken from photographs to allow the viewer to interpret the next clue in the sequence. The intended audience for my work will be people who are interested in 90s music and culture, including adults who have experienced the 90s rave scene and young adults that enjoy the retro style of today.