Personal Sign System Initial Research

Initial Ideas

For my personal sign system I really wanted to do something I would be interested in researching and carrying on through to designing. I devised a few initial ideas:

- A brief history of Leeds

• spanning millions (?) or thousands of years: Ice Age + Bronze Age remains/ treasure, Romans up to present day
• time based idea

- Victorian Leeds

• buildings - corn exchange/town hall/thorntons arcade

- Industry in Leeds

• 18th century focus

- Shopping

• shopping break guide? route for shops to visit

- Treasure hunt

• For kids? geocaching

- Music scene in Leeds

• Brudenell Social club, O2 Academy, Belgrave Music Hall

One idea was to create a system for the music scene in Leeds, as there are many live msuic venues dotted around the centre. I began to look at bigger venues such as the O2 Academy and First Direct Arena and at smaller places like Belgrave Music Hall and Brudenell Social Club. This idea was discarded as I felt I could explore my other ideas more thoroughly.

In the 17 and 1800's Leeds was a major centre for industry, with growth of engineering, chemical, leather and printing industries and textile manufacture - including the woollen cloth market - becoming bigger than ever and establishing itself as Leeds largest industry. Leeds even became known as 'the city that makes everything' at the end of the 1800's.

Developed ideas:

• a walking trail for the major mills for each industry eg (Bean Ing for wool (now demolished))
• a wayfinding system for a mill renovated to a museum (Hunslet Mill and Victoria Works for example)
• a system to show the Impact that industry has had on Leeds (including major mills, the way the city has grown around industry, structures and places that are a result of industry eg. Kirkgate Market, Briggate, City Varieties Music Hall and Leeds Grand Theatre) - could be in form of a walking trail, educational trail/hunt for school kids learning about Leeds

Crit

Feedback from my crit was positive with my group thinking my ideas was original and highly likely to be successful considering the vast wealth of research available for me to do this project.

Ideas provided for me to help build my project were to study the architecture of the mills themselves.

One idea I felt I could develop more was to focus on the textile industry - Leeds most prominent industry - and I could even consider physically making signs out of wool and cloth ect. This would be a cool idea to cary out and a good way to bring my sign system to life rather than keeping it digital and 2 dimensional.

Final Idea

Taking on board advice and feedback from my crit I have decided that I am going to create a way finding system for educational purposes, encompassing both the major mills of Leeds and the cultural impact industry has had on the city itself. I want my system to be in the form of a trail, leading from place to place along a map on Leeds, with information to be found and collected at every point. In this way I aim to create a fun educational system by including elements of a treasure hunt - hopefully encouraging students or even families to get to know the history and culture of their city better. I want to create instructional material to guide people on their trail, perhaps in the form of a leaflet and also a signage system to be placed in Leeds, in the corresponding locations. My sign system will be created with a primary focus on colour and iconography.