Exhibition day!

The Cuba Intersection set-up.

Was great to hear some positive words about this project that I'd had a lot to do with in the last couple of weeks!

Great to hear some positive feedback from Nick - "one of the best collective presentations we've seen from this presentation".

Also great to chat to him afterwards about how these help the council and facilitate future thinking.

Set - up

My team and I had planned to set up the Intersection Safety exhibit around 3pm however Joyce had a hand in and was busy and I came down with a bit of a funny tummy so I didn't make it in either however Calvin and Hanna were there to keep a watchful eye over things and send through these pics:

Finishing up

So apparently we aren't changing the design and it's just going to be the OHP strange font as per Friday. The communication has definitely been lacking with this project and I'm at the point where I'm just excited to see it done. We will be setting up tomorrow, ready for exhibition on Wednesday.

Friday touch base

Today I finally found Missy on campus and was able to get up to speed on what's happening with the poster templates. She showed me the design that it had been changed to (which was completely different from what we'd done and had obviously been done without me) and I was surprised by the font choice. The introduction had been edited a lot as well and she pretty much told me they didn't need my assistance any more which kind of sucked as I was looking forward to having an input with this.

Then as I left campus I saw Jo who had said she wasn't sure about the current design and wanted everyone to have a play with it and then as a class we'd decide on a style.

So I'm looking forward to having a play with this over the weekend.

Cuba work

We decided that of our 3 renders, 2 of them looked quite similar so Joyce went down to the intersection today and took some new photos, then Calvin re photoshopped our crossing in. This new image looks much better so all we have left to do is finish our map and decide on how we want it printed.

Still trying to get a hold of Missy...

Still no word from Missy and I couldn't find her on campus so I've posted on our Facebook page to try and get in touch with her as I know many groups want to see this template and get things finished off.

Wednesday class

This morning we presented to the class the exhibition space we'd mapped out. It seemed that everyone was relatively happy with their spaces so that was pleasing. Then we all split off with our respective groups to make sure things for the exhibition were on track.

Intersection safety were feeling pretty calm however Tom came over and wanted to see what we'd done with the whole intersection and pressed us to push this further however we all strongly disagree and feel that as an outcome it would not resolve our brief so we put the finishing touches on our document to print and worked on our do from the template that Missy and I had created last night.

It currently looks like this:

The only problem is that I haven't seen Missy and been able to discuss the template further as to whether it was staying like this or changing due to feedback from Tom and Jo.

I sent her a friend request on Facebook and followed it up with a message.

Then I decided I would be best to go and help out the "one man's trash" group as they were still struggling a little. I went up to see where they were at and stayed to give them some Feedback. Then Tom arrived and together him and I gave them the feedback to push forward with a system of their own as it made more sense then trying to 'pretty up' the system that already existed. The project is coming along much better than I'd anticipated though so I left them with that feedback.

Week 10-11

Because my group was at a reasonably good stage I offered my help to the "one man's trash" team however they had just got some new help from Gen and Alfred so I instead responded to a plea of assistance from the exhibition team. We had a meeting on Tuesday to plan out where each team would exhibit and make a template for the posters that would unify the exhibition.

Planning out the spaces actually worked really well. We worked first on a paper plan with the information that had been given to Sam and Hannah through the google form.

Then we went down to Gallery C to actually map out and get a feel for the spaces.

We were really surprised by how big the space actually is and we think we've organised a really good set up for the exhibition.

We also discussed the posters and thought it would be a good idea for Missy and I to be in charge of the template and get everyone to send their text and images to us so that we could make everything look the same. So we worked on a template together with Sam and Sarah-Louise for a while whilst Hannah photoshopped the Gallery template for everyone.

We created this document (excuse that it's in two pictures - couldn't screenshot the whole thing in detail):

We wanted to play off the already existing identity of the bright green left over from exposure so we chose bright orange and pink to complement this.

Wednesday decisions

We spent time in class trying out solutions that embraced the whole space:

Sarah-Louise and I played around on a document, I tried these takes:

My first play with the doc she'd created was keeping CUBA to one side and adding in some diagonal "warning" type lines where it becomes the shared road space on Lower Cuba. These weren't very effective though so then I played with the layout of the type a bit:




But didn't find this to be very successful either so handed back to Sarah-Louise who mocked up a wee trail for the turning cars and popped it in situ:

However none of us were happy with this and we really didn't feel like it fit our brief. So we decided to spend our time more effectively finessing the idea we were happy with and preparing all of our content ready for the exhibition team.

Wednesday class/feedback

We came to class this morning feeling really pleased that we had a near finished project.

We presented first to Tom and Jo because of our position of being close to finished. Unfortunately they threw a bit of a spanner in the works.

Whilst they were really impressed with where we were at - they were questioning us about a lot of things:

* why were the 2 crossings different colours?
Tom liked green because it suggested to him safety/go and the pink was close to red which says "warning". Jo disagreed however and liked the pink, especially given our consideration that we stayed away from red/orange/yellow because of their warning connotations.
They did both agree that maybe it would be better if the two crossings were the same colour though to keep it consistent so we need to make a decision about that.

* why don't we embrace the whole area?
Tom and Jo were really keen on the idea of spreading this so that it encompassed the whole road area, however we think this is because they didn't really understand our brief. We did agree that we could try it but none of us were really sure that it conveyed the message that we were trying to: cross safely to either side of lower Cuba Street.

* check out these recent articles on installations that are similar:

https://thespinoff.co.nz/auckland/11-05-2017/bright-spots-on-the-highways-of-doom/

http://www.designboom.com/art/opperclaes-creative-crosswalk-rotterdam-05-15-2017/

Whilst these were relevant we think our own precedent is more successful and more relevant to our situation.

Tuesday Meeting

Today was great - you can't beat in person meet ups.

Calvin was running about an hour late because he missed his bus XD so us girls made some calls and hoped he'd back them!

We went back to the original font with the lines as when we looked at it side by side with the newer ideas it was just ten times better! But we decided that the green and pink scheme was the way to go rather than the blue as dark colours would get lost against the tarmac at night whereas bright colours would stand out day and night. We also were considering the fact that pink and green weren't used on any road markings/road signs so they seemed like good colours to be using to avoid confusion. We spent a long time around Hanna's computer each inputting ideas and trying little differences until we got to a design we were totally happy with:

Then we decided to print a portion out at full scale so that we could see how thick the lines were and whether we thought it would be feasible.

This was the section we printed which is between the "u" and the "b":

Obviously the print quality at uni was terrible but we think it looks pretty wicked! And the line widths seem fine.

Now I just have to finish our document, Calvin is going to add the "look left" and "look right" details to the doc and pop them into real scenes with the photos he took, and tomorrow we are going to discuss and decide on how we want to exhibit.

My iterations

One of the points I noted from Tom during feedback had been that all the little lines might be too complex when it comes to paint maintenance so my first point was to look at some alternative typefaces:

As I went I also made minor edits to some of the type faces so that they looked better to my eye:

Working off this precedent from last week:

I tried out my new typefaces:

The 2 I thought worked best were Moondance (2nd) and Balans-Normal (4th) so I did a few iterations with these. I also chose to use brighter colours to play with in my iterations as I think we will need to pick some really bright colours otherwise the crossing will be lost at night time.

When I showed the team, they - like me - thought the last one was really interesting and cool, so I popped it up on the drive and Calvin had a play and manipulated it a bit:

Given these developments we were all really excited to meet on Tuesday and flesh out a final design.

Wednesday feedback!

We all felt really good going into today as having Sarah-Louise in our group had generated some really fresh ideas that we were excited to share with everyone. We took everyone through our process in case they thought we'd gone too far and wanted to suggesting stepping back to one of our older ideas.

This was the stuff we'd generated this week with new patterns and under new colour schemes. But then we took a step away from this into something more simple.

Feedback was really great!

Everyone was really pleased with the new development and how much more interesting it was. The constructive points we took from it were:

blue and gold = Massey?? Try different colours, and even maybe a more restricted colour palette.
trying a change in orientation was a really good idea - but maybe all the letters could face different ways so that it doesn't just work the one way.

We are ready to tackle these points this coming week!
We are all going to have a play with off the existing document and try twisting things around a bit. I am going to draft up our informative/proposal doc. And Calvin is going to take some more quality photos of the intersection for us to photoshop our design into.

Then on Tuesday we will meet up and finalise it!

Patterns and colour palettes

This week I was on pattern duty again - this time creating more geometric ones:

I generated this pattern but it was too dissimilar from the rest.
I did really like the dimension it gave though so tried it with darker lines:

This still didn't feel like it fitted with the rest. So I blacked out some levels:

This felt waaaaay better!

Then I decided to put together a CUBACUBACUBA pattern like Tom had suggested and it looked really cool!

I also looked into some colour palettes. I am a big fan of bright colours and wanted to avoid colours like red that are already used so that's where I started. Then I thought about the building that make the intersection significant - like when I'm explaining the work to someone I use the buildings on the corners as reference (Banks Shoes, Burger King, Shoe Connection, The Body Shop) so I put together a colour series from their logos - and it actually came out very similar to the umbrella/bucket fountain colour scheme we'd already been working with which makes me feel justified in those colour choices.

WCC Response

I persevered with with getting in touch with the council and managed to get a response out of them in regards to the art piece that had been installed there previously. And it was such a great response too! Really went in depth about the project, the why, when, how etc.

Wednesday Feedback

Today was kind of crushing.

We thought we were getting to a point where this project was refining and becoming close to an end. However all of today's feedback felt like it was flipping where we were at on it's head and asking us to try so much new stuff.

Feedback:

- font feels like Impact, very condensed and not very attractive.
- the whole things feels a bit clip art like and very cliche.
- maybe try more simple/geometric patterns and forget the historical aspect. Instead of trying to reflect what Cuba WAS, add to the flavour of what it is NOW.
- if you keep the colour scheme that will give it enough consistency without needing the patterns.
- but also it would be good to see potential variations of the colour scheme.
- zebra crossings don't need foot prints to say "walk here" so our design doesn't either.
- try using type as a pattern.
- explore more in terms of the font/type faces.
- could you play with perspective, is it to be read by pedestrians or cars? Could it be altered so that it can be read from both sides of the street? Play with anamorphic type?
- the scale feels really nice - give the class an opportunity to feel the size of the whole thing though - i.e put it in an open space.

This all felt really negative and like we had to try a whole lot more stuff, but we took it on the chin and went downstairs to try and play with perspective using a projector in the corridor on level A.

This was not very successful however:

Projecting it this way didn't really give us the perspective we were looking for, so we flipped it so that it was running long ways and taped it out:

This was more interesting but with such a short fat word and the flat surface of a road we felt like this was taking things too far and our justifications of the way we had it resulted in a better project.

Having the type flat so that the white letters act like a zebra crossing, and facing the cars so that it is readable to them and encourages a slower approach made a lot of sense to us, so we are going to stick with that.

This week I am going to generate some new geometric patterns and colour palettes, whilst Calvin and Joyce think about some new typefaces. We will meet up to try these, discuss them, and prepare the best option for Wednesday as we believe that next week the project should be completed.

Prep for Wednesday's class

We put together a presentation and went through the questions Jo had put on Facebook:

–What progress has been made since last week
We developed more patterns and developed the style further to now mirror the font used on the Cuba Street sign. We tested scale which revealed some inconsistencies in the pattern sizes. It also showed us that the change in font actually detracted from the style we'd been generating.

–What needs to happen to wrap this project up (and how soon will this happen)
We need to generate a refined digital mock up and photoshop this into context. This may require taking some better site pictures. We also want to write up a supporting document to act as a proposal of the project. We are still waiting to find out about the materiality - I am to follow up on this during the next week.

–What prototyping has been done (virtual, physical, full-scale, model…)
A full scale, tiled print of a section of the design. And a user test with chalk on campus.

–What skills are needed to move this project to completion
Neat rendering skills for final output, maybe photography skills for better site images, and a word whizz to prepare the proposal (I am putting my hand up for this as I am a marketing student and really enjoy writing).

–Who needs to move to a different project (because they've been in the same one for 4 classes)
Celia needs to move this week, and Calvin, Joyce, and Irina only have 1 more week to give to this project before they would have to move too.

Large scale printing!

Today Joyce, Celia and I met up to do a full size tile print of our project to show on Wednesday.
First Joyce met up with my boyfriend to measure the size of the crossing down at Cuba Street.

It is 7.3m long, and 2.3m wide.

We then resized the document to these measurements. To print the entire thing would've been an absolute mission and waste of paper and printing credit so we decided to just print the C.

We were all so impressed by seeing it at full scale and really happy with it.
The test also helped us to see that the scale of our patterns was a bitt off - the feet were too big and the paddles needed to be bigger.