Wednesday Class

Today's class went really well, we presented our idea to 2 teams and Jo who all had a lot of positive things to say about the work:

- we could try using something sculptural to interact with what we are creating on the ground. Jo showed us this picture as an example.

- to test we could do chalk spray colour patches on campus to create a "crossing" and see if people use it. As part of this was the idea of using the feet pattern at the start to encourage people to walk on it.

- we need to measure the intersection down at Cuba Street so that we can make this to scale and proportionate.

- does it need an explanation or is the beauty of it the abstract references to history? Maybe a press release would cover it off?

- would we add the patterns elsewhere up Cuba as visual cues??

- it reminded Tom of Piet Mondrian's work:

- Tom also questioned the typeface and would like us to create a few different stylizations this week.

- He also wanted us to justify why it said CUBA and not something different


We also decided we wanted to try adding a few other patterns (umbrella, bucket fountain, more Cuba icons), and we also wanted to try one with less differential patterns and just the nautical theme.

From here we went out to look at where we could test and came across a few locations.

On campus:

This is a place people apparently cross quite often so could be a good way to test however because it's not already an existing crossing it might not be perceived as we hope - so we will test and see.

Off campus:

A lot of students cross in this spot on Tasman Street so could be a good test however is dangerous if students start to think it is a genuine crossing and expect cars to stop.

This crossing where Bidwell Street meets Tasman Street has one section of crossing controlled by lights that is only really used when people are going into Wellington High so this could be a good spot to test as it is a bit safer and better mirrors the Cuba Street.


After discussing these options with Jo, we decided to do the chalk test first and that the Bidwell Street test might be too hard. During the week we set out a plan:
Sam - creating more patterns and emailing Wellington City Council about the old art piece on Cuba.
Calvin - refining existing piece of type.
Joyce & Celia - different stylizations.
On Monday, the team are meeting to do the chalk test.
On Tuesday we will have a meeting and do a large scale tiled print of our idea.

Second meeting

Today's meeting was great!

We all showed each other what we'd done. I'd looked into more examples of art on the road:

Everyone loved the one from Holland as it was cute but not the direction we are thinking of heading.

Irina told us about her research into the history of Cuba Street which was fascinating - the reason it is named Cuba Street is because there was a boat called the Cuba that sailed the cook strait and was one of the first settler boats of the area.

We all thought this was really interesting and would be great to somewhat share.

Then Calvin showed us some of the things he'd found and I was completely taken with one image in particular:

This just popped off the road so well and was so inviting. It also looked like it worked - which looked like it was helped by it's placement. It ran directly across the road in conjunction with the traffic lights.

I came up with the idea of using this example as our starting point and replacing the patterns they had used with boat patterns to reference the history of Cuba Street, and also add type into some of the squares. We would have to use simple big letters though as we don't want people stopping on the road to read things!

As we were talking I started thinking about how there are two lots of traffic lights and how we could make this work with two sets - would we do two of them? Ideally not as they'd lose impact. Could we remove one of the sets of lights and create an angled version so that it directs pedestrians to cross safely to one side? We drew up some shapes/sketches in my book to try and visualise it for the whole team:

I also mocked something up on my computer really quickly to try and get my idea across:

 


We decided to each work on different elements, Irina had picked out some beautiful colours and generated a kind of paddle pattern so we got her to create a colour sheet for us all to work off, and Celia and I started working on patterns whilst Joyce and Calvin thought more about the type.

My first pattern is a sail pattern:

By this time we decided to split up and continue working separately on patterns etc and come together again before next Wednesday to make sure we had something substantial and refined for our presentation.

First meeting

Our meeting today was so efficient!!!

The team ran me through where they were at at the point of last Wednesday's presentation, and the all the feedback they had been given. And then we go to talking about not over complicating the brief and all came to a decision that the seat idea was a bit of a red herring and needed to just be dropped, and instead we need to focus on using spatial type to invite people to cross safely.

We considered that maybe this even meant getting rid of the traffic lights there altogether!

With all of this in mind, we planned a meeting for next Wednesday at 2pm to really knuckle down our idea. Between now and then we are all going to look at existing spatial type and mock up ways it could potentially be used in our space.

Over the break

After seeing the presentation from the street safety group, I decided I wanted to go back to working on this brief.

It felt like the way it had been picked up and run with had gone a bit askew and the team had gone off on the seating tangent when in reality that wasn't the idea of the solution.

Because I had been one of the first teams to work on this brief I feel a sense of ownership of it in a way that I really want to see my baby succeed! So I talked to the group and they were happy to have me on board as they were losing a member over the break.

We set up a meeting for the following Wednesday to go over the feedback and work on a direction.

Wednesday Panel Presentation

We felt confident presenting our idea today and got a lot of feedback:

*red poles carry other meanings - some existing red poles/totems have Maori significance in Wellington.

*if we're going to take an idea from the suburban concept keep with it's tone - i.e. keep the communication/wording simple and practical.

*go back to blue as the colour you work with as red, orange and yellow have too many other significances.

*go big! scale the idea of the projections onto Te Papa or something wild to mirror the large impact of a tsunami.

*Tom talked about going back to using levels as a visual aesthetic however we all disagree with this comment as we delved into the issue and decided it wasn't a good strategy.

*think about how something functions before and during an emergency situation.

*using the existing structure of a lamp post is great - because it has height and is strong.

*make a clear and directional system.

And as a cohort a comment was made regarding how all of our different systems work together - i.e. red tsunami lamp posts, red cable car instructions - it all gets messy and confusing as a whole.

Monday meeting and progressions for presentation

For our Monday night meeting we ran it from 5-8pm so that each of us was there for a decent amount of time - I was there from 5-7pm, others were there from 6-8pm etc.

We had the lighting studio booked as light was one of the things we wanted to play with and see if there was something fun we could do with it. However these tests weren't really working so I tried our idea of having the history narrative wrap around the pole:

This wasn't hugely affective and neither were our light experiments so we needed to devise a new strategy.

We decided that the space at the waterfront was our best space to use because of its high level of foot traffic, it's power capabilities on the lamp posts and it's proximity to the water.

From here we considered generating a projection on the ground with the accompaniment of sound as a way to educate people on tsunamis. We really liked the idea of the zones so in keeping with this thought that it could be our ground image, and then we could project the water over them. We also needed a way to trigger this projection and thought the poles could become touch sensitive. A way I developed to do this was simply by using the word touch but I had noticed that the zones made a kind of "C" shape so implementing that in the letter space:

And we also thought that we needed to bring type in at the end of the "wave" as a message reinforcement, so I came up with this:

The team decided to go for something a bit more colloquial though, and wanted to create this kind of branding of "I won't be here when it hits" to inform people that they are not safe in a tsunami in that area.

Nicole came up with an animation whilst I generated the type for this idea, and Micky, Fran, and Hamish made some prototypes of lamp posts. What they had done was generate a stencil with the wave logo from the suburban projects and their quote and painted it onto a cardboard pole to show at the presentation.

The idea developed into the lamp posts being coloured as per the zone they were in, with the stencil on them, and then the projection installation would only occur at a few of the ones along the waterfront as these were the key zone.

This week it didn't really feel like we worked very strongly as a team - it felt a bit like 2 v 3 on ideas and executions which was a bit disappointing however we did all believe that what we'd developed was an improvement on the week before.

We used google slides to prepare our presentation for Wednesday.