14th Sep 2009
Opinion
4 Comments
The TTC has a long history of abusing users with haphazard signage, but for a second in the early 90’s the TTC seemed to care and wayfinding expert Paul Arthur was hired to make sense of the mess. Arthur’s new signage aimed to be easily understood by everyone including kids, the visually impaired, and the illiterate. It worked rather well in fact, which is probably why the TTC, famous for it’s lack of design sense, functional or otherwise, quietly buried the project.
Today you can see the remnants of Arthur’s system at St. George station decaying and mostly forgotten.
Recently, I’ve wondered what could have been of this system and what each stations pictograph would be. As I understand it only St. George, Spadina, and Bay were designed. Bay being waves, Spadina an Indian Chief, and St. George a dragon. But what would have been used to represent Union Station or Wilson station?
So I thought I’d put it to you, I’ve created a template which you can download and design your own interpretation of each station. Then, upload it to Flickr tag it with “TTCSignage” and post a link to it in the comments here.
The pictographs can be derived from a number of avenues. Arthur suggested using rhyme (Chester = Jester), geographical or nearby attraction (High Park = Tree), historical references (Kipling = Quill), or the origin of the word (Spadina = Aboriginal).
It should be interesting to see what …
1st Sep 2009
Clients
0 Comments
Titus and I had been going back and forth for a while about ideas for his business cards, trying to pin down a style that somehow captured him in a caricature or focusing on his love of coffee. However I’m not terribly good at faces, and I was never sold on the coffee angle.
In April, I being swamped with work and Titus needing a new card for an upcoming event, he began exploring designs himself. One of the designs he posted to twitter managed to catch my eye and became the launching point for my “suggestions”.
As I mentioned I’m a bit of a sucker when it comes to providing suggestions. Often handing finished designs rather then advice on what to improve. Such is the case here as well.
The blue Titus used immediately stuck me as a visual element that would look great in large amounts. I also decided that setting everything in white Helvetica would really pop off the blue. The use of the single typeface also cleaned up a lot of the visual clutter and accented the new arrangement of the information into a grid layout.
The final piece of the puzzle was the tag line. Ideally there would be variations of the “…is” theme, or a blank space to write it in, Titus chose “…is still alive” in the end however.
And he is still alive as of this post, so make …
4th Aug 2009
Clients
0 Comments
Back in May Ben Delano asked me to take a look a logo he put together for a new podcast he was starting and to give him my input on it.
Being a visual person, I sometimes find it easier to convey the idea graphically rather then spelling it out in words. As they say, a picture is worth 1,000. Once I get started however, my perfectionist streak tends to come out and I often wind up completing the design. That’s not to say I do this for everyone, so I hope I don’t get a ton of tweets and emails asking for my opinion in the hopes of free work.
Ben was one of the lucky few. Looking at his initial logo (below-right) I found it to be very rough. The typeface used looked unfinished, the colour combination was a bit too basic, and the composition left the elements competing for the same mind space.
To begin this project, as someone not entirely familiar with the genre, I began researching punk album covers to find commonalities among them and the overall style of design within the genre. The two that influenced this logo the most were the typography and colour pallets.
The type on most albums was either distressed and misaligned, or very sketchy almost scribbled; the latter obviously was the influence for the project, and I hand drew the type with various references from my research. The result is very evocative and distinctly punk in style and arrangement. …
7th Jul 2009
Opinion
2 Comments
Steve Groves at the London Free Press posted a link on twitter to an interview with photojournalist Derek Ruttan that had a selection of press passes he’d collected during his career.
It was almost surprising to see how little care is put into them. That journalists are granted access to sensitive areas, from crime scenes to government facilities, on a daily basis all across the country, with little more then a ball of paper with a glamour shot and the word PRESS.
You would think there would be some sort of standardization for such a document. That maybe the media or the government would have developed a standard in the days since Police Chief’s signed each pass and a slip of paper in a fedora went out of style. Especially in an age where these passes could easily be replicated by any 15 year old with a decent printer.
Anyone could throw one together and have a good chance of it going unnoticed; I’ve even created one. In 2006 I put together a series of passes for an online media company and it’s staff. Admittedly it was a bit over-designed, more so in comparison to other companies, but it was in the right direction of what standardized passes should resemble.
I think there needs to be a set of fundamental features when putting together a standard ID card like this. Much of the features are standard on licenses and passports now, …
23rd Jun 2009
Updates
2 Comments
My good friend Kataish at Odd-ish Creations has been hand carving stamps for the last couple of months and has been turning out some great stuff. So when I got a message from her with a link to the image below I was more then pleased to see my logo immortalized as a hand carved rubber stamp.
It’s always good to think about how you can extend you’re brand through little things like stickers and other giveaways. A custom stamp is a great addition to that arsenal, even if it’s only used for fun.
Make sure to check out her Esty store, Odd-ish Creations, and if you ever need a stamp made up I fully recommend going to Odd-ish Creations for them.
Latest Comments
Lauren, Joe Clark, Clarence Johnson, John L
Rockinon, Kevin, Carmi, Jesse, John L, Phronk
John L, Tommy Vallier
John L, Pat
Rob Russo