Exhibition Visual Identity
Design Sprint
Client Project -Department of Art And Design
Final Logo Concept
Description of project
​
In collaboration with my university design class, I engaged in a series of four design sprints, focused on design process, and the creation of an identity for an upcoming Department of Art and Design exhibition in the FAB Gallery. The goal was to create an exhibition identity around the idea "design can save your life."
​
Design Sprints
Sprint 1
In the first sprint, to prompt our ideas, the class was given the statement "design can save your life." The class gathered around a table and wrote down ideas and thoughts about how design impacts life. We talked about we thought design was and how we would define it. As well, we wrote down the different ways design can save lives.
​
This sprint allowed me to create my own ideas of what I thought the exhibition should be about and what it should entail.
​
Sprint 1 in class process work
Sprint 2
In the second sprint, the class was challenged to take our visual, formal and conceptual ideas that we had found, and analyze. With this analyze I came up with ideas and concepts for the exhibition name and its sub themes.
​
The goal was to define a problem, the main premise, and question for the exhibition.
​
Concept 1
Title: Design can save your life.
Subtitle: In fact, it can change the world.
Description:
This exhibition will show how design can be universally understood. Design can improve many aspects of our everyday life, therefore improve the community around us. Design is everywhere and everything. It serves to better life.
Context:
Show everyday designs. Example: “One of the most notorious examples is the design of the ballot cards for the 2000 U.S. presidential election in Palm Beach County, Florida,” Rawsthorn explained. “The design was changed in the interests of clarity and legibility, but proved so confusing to voters that it may well have changed the outcome not only of the vote there, but the entire election.” - The Atlantic
Design has power and influence.
Tone:
Informative
​
Concept 3
Title: Design saves lives.
Subtitle: Design is more important than you may think.
Description:
Design is one of the most powerful forces in our lives, whether you notice it or not. Design has an increasingly important role. Design can alter your life. Design can be inspiring, empowering and enlightening.
Context:
Throughout the exhibition there will be different everyday designs. Each of the designs will have a call out and highlight a certain aspect of their design that acts save lives. By highlighting different aspects of design will show how design is important in our lives.
Tone:
Research
Educational
Concept 5
Title: Notice the Un-noticeable.
Subtitle: Design can save your life.
Description:
This exhibition will explore how design impacts what we notice, what we understand and the actions we take in our everyday lives because of design. Design plays an essential role, it can mean life or death in some cases.
Context:
This exhibition may highlight everyday objects that ordinary people might not expect or know are designed. It will explain how good design will go unnoticed, and how it still works to communicate important messages that will save peoples lives. Design will tell a story through examples of everyday objects.
This exhibition may prompt visitors by asking them for example “did you notice the design?” and will answer questions along the way by showing formal aspects of design.
Tone:
Educational
Interactive
Concept 2
Title: Can Design Save your Life?
Subtitle: Yes. And this is How.../It is a simple answer, with a powerful message.
Description:
This exhibition acts to show people that design is not just colour and typefaces, it is more. It is research. It is powerful. It is persuasive. It can improve everyone’s wellbeing. It can save your life.
Context:
This exhibition will look at typefaces, size, and colour schemes in posters, and signage to convey the message that design can save your life. It will build up a system of basic design principles and ideas, and how these principles work together to create powerful designs. The exhibition will also include design research to show how designs are influenced by real information.
The first floor will be small interactive stations, where people can move through steps of learning about basic design principles. This might include colour, shape, typefaces etc. The activities will explain why elements work and why others don’t work.
The second floor will showcase real designs that save people's lives everyday. The projects will be broken down to their basic principles to fully explain how design saves lives.
Tone:
Educational
Research
Informative
Concept 4
Title: Good Design.
Subtitle: It can change your life. It can save your life.
Description:
This exhibition will highlight the widespread and subliminal nature of graphic design in shaping our environment, our health and finally our sense of self.
Context:
The exhibition will show everyday objects that improve quality of life. How design can persuade, guide us to safely, and understand complicated information. How it can make your life easier thus changing your life for the better.
This exhibition will have examples of good and bad design. It will highlight what good design means and what it might look like. It will also show how simple good design can make someone’s life easier. The exhibition will show examples of how good design can save lives. Visitors will be able to interact with designs, to complete games or tasks to test them to see if they understand what a good design is/meant to look like.
Tone:
Informative
Interactive
Educational
Fun
Sprint 3
In the third sprint, as a class we reviewed our individual exhibition names and sub themes. We were tasked with considering deeper implication and means to our concepts. In this meeting, as a group we agreed on overarching principles of the exhibition, and defined the main title, "Guiding Principles."
​
As well, the group talked about several possibilities for subheadings, and possibilities for the subsections (conceptual organization of the exhibition).
​
Sprint 3 ideas and concepts from in class discussion
Exhibition Concept
Sprint 4
With the main title of the exhibition desided on in sprint three,
I came up with new subheadings. These subheadings would be used to clarify and bring meaning to the title. Working from what we discussed as a class, I defined three subheading and the conceptual sections for the exhibition . These subheadings conceptually work with the established title and reflecting back to the posed questions: "Design Can Save Your Life" and "Can Design Save Lives?"
Including both the title and subtitle, I created a wordmark that would be used to identify, brand, and promote the exhibition. Through these concepts I tried to express my conceptual approach and tone of the exhibition as I understood it.
Logo ideation
Description of Exhibition
“Guiding Principles” encompasses beliefs and values, to create a guides for a universal understanding of what is important in design, and in life. This exhibition acts to communicate to people that design is not just colour and typefaces, it is more. It is research. It is powerful. It is persuasive. It can improve everyone’s wellbeing.The exhibition physically demonstrate how design can be universally understood. Design can improve many aspects of our everyday life, therefore improve the community around us.
Design is one of the most powerful forces in our lives, whether you notice it or not. Design can alter your life. Design can be inspiring, empowering and enlightening. Design is everywhere and everything. It serves to better life. Moreover, design can save lives.
Tone
Educational
Research/knowledge based
Informative
Interactive
Fun
Reflective
​
Audience
​
University students and staff.
About the Heading
The title of the this exhibition comes from two ideas: Guidelines and 7 Principles of Design. Guidelines in a design program are a set of lines that create order in a design. The guidelines are the framework of a well designed document or project. The 7 principles of design act as an important set rules to instruct designers on the choices they make.
Not only can guiding principles be applied to design, they can be applied to better life mentally and physically.
About the Subheadings
​
Fundamental elements of design and life/Fundamentals of design and life
This subhead allows the viewers to understand that the exhibition will consist of the fundamental ideas and elements of how good design is created. As well, it conveys that the exhibition acts to relate life to design principles ignorer to better life.
How to design. How to live.
This subheading gives insight into what the exhibition is about in a blunt and simple way. It tells the viewer that they will learn the guiding principles on how to design, and learn the guiding principles on how to live a good life.
Thinking design. Improving life.
This subheading conveys that the exhibition is about design and that the viewer will learn and think about design in a new way. As well, they will understand how design can improve life.
​
​
Sections for the Exhibition
Each of the subsections of the exhibition will communicate and demonstrate of the principles of design. These sections will also be interactive, allowing the viewer to learn with a hand-on approach. As well, these subsections will allow reflection on how design’s guiding principles can also apply as life's guiding principles.
-
Proportion: Proportion is the visual size and weight of elements in a composition and how they relate to each other.
-
Balance: Balance is used to illustrate the visual weight of
an image. -
Movement: Movement is controlling the elements in
a composition so that the eye is led to move from one to
the next. -
Emphasis: Colour, space, texture, and line work together to determine the focus of elements.
-
Contrast: Contrasting subject matter brings a narrative to the design and is created when two or more opposing elements are present.
-
Repetition/Rhythm: The recurring or organized/disorganized distribution of visual elements throughout a design or system.
-
Whitespace: White space (or negative space) deals with what you don’t add, creating hierarchy and organization.​
Logo Process
Wordmarks 1 & 2
When design these logos I imagined something that would be showcased on a gallery wall or on a pamphlet. I wanted to create something that is eye catchy, but also relate to what the exhibition is about.
​
-
I used elements from Adobe’s guidelines to create a shape in the background of the logo.
-
I imagined this logo to be the construction of the logo. It uses guidelines referring back to the foundation of design.
Wordmark 1
Wordmark 2
Wordmarks 3
This logo is on the fun and modern side. It uses and showcases the principles of design. It uses proportion, balance, movement, emphasis, contrast, repetition and whitespace. ​
Wordmark 3
Wordmarks 4
This logo plays off the computer mouse when the designer is creating a design.
Wordmark 4 version 1
Wordmark 4 version 2
Exhibition Logo
Final logo concept
Logo
The final logo I designed for this exhibition is derived from word mark 1, 2, and 3. This logo is on the fun and modern side. It uses and showcases the principles of design. It uses proportion, balance, movement, emphasis, contrast, repetition and whitespace. ​As well it is a construction of the logo. It uses guidelines referring back to the foundation of design.
​
Because this exhibition is about the guiding principles of design and how design can translate into life and bettering life, I created this logo with the overall theme and tone in mind. The Principles are the foundations for the design. In the logo this word is being designed and lays on the "floor" which is the foundation of the next step.s The Guiding word portion symbolizes the finished design that will guide the viewer. By placing the subhead at an angle and at the end of the heading, I want the viewer to read it as two statements, "Guiding principles thinking design. Guiding principles improving life."
​
Keeping in mind the viewer is on a guided path through the exhibition, I wanted the logo to reflect guides on the floor. As well the shape and angle of the logo creates movement, furthering the sense of being guided.
Project Reflection
By carrying out this project, I learned that these steps are important to the creative process and can lead to meaningful design. This project also showed me how a design idea can change over time. I really enjoyed working creatively with my classmates and discussing ideas with them. Overall, I can use and apply these design exercises to my own personal design process.