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Last lessons

May 11, 2016

After four years, it is now time for me to bid farewell to this blog, which has seen me through all of my graphic design endeavors—from Graphic Design Studio, to Introduction to Wayfinding, and finally to Types of Art. For my last post, I want to share three lessons I learned from my time here.

Take initiative

Things don’t just happen. Somebody needs to take action. When discussing accessibility in the Arts Center during the Introduction to Wayfinding class, I knew that there was no better way than to actually ride a wheelchair around campus and experience the building as someone with special needs. No one asked me to ride a wheelchair. I just knew it needed to happen, so I did it. When I learned how to use a laser cutter, I realized that I could use it to bring type into the three dimensional world, so I built an alphabet puzzle. No one assigned the project to me, but I did it. When I was designing my Capstone exhibition, no one told me what to do. So I designed a blueprint for what I wanted my space to look like and worked quickly to collect every piece of my exhibition, such as the frames, furniture, and kitchenware. Sometimes the brief is not complete, and sometimes there is no brief at all. What is important is to have the skill to recognize a need and to have the determination to fulfill it.

Be able to defend yourself

There are two elements to this lesson. Firstly, don’t do anything without reason. Design is the opposite of randomness. Take time to plan out your work so that you can explain every detail of it. It never hurts to double, or triple check. Secondly, make sure your work accurately represents yourself even when you are absent. Contrary to what your parents may have taught you, people judge by appearance—especially in the world of art and design.

Ask for help

When I have a goal in mind, I tend to shut everyone out until I have accomplished that goal. However, when I submitted a file of the wrong dimensions to the printers for the Wayfinding course and wasted the school’s funds, I realized that working alone is not the most efficient.

Asking for help is not a shameful thing. Asking for help is being resourceful. In fact, we are blessed with many students and instructors who possess diverse skill sets on this campus. Without Luis’ knowledge on how to use the laser cutter, I would not have been able to build my wood block. Without Nino’s expertise on printing, I would not have been able to ink my block and print my final project. Without Kate’s skill in carpentry, I would not have been able to frame my work and make it presentable. Just as the English poet John Donne once said, “No man is an island.”

I came to NYUAD thinking I wanted to major in SRPP, but now I am graduating with a degree in Visual Arts. To this day, I don’t know if I made the right decision. But when I can work for hours and hours on a book design and even forget to eat, I know that this is the only decision I would have made.

I am thankful for all the lessons that I have learned, and more thankful for those who have taught them to me.

Laser Printmaking

April 27, 2016

During my semester in New York, I took the Introduction to Printmaking class at Steinhardt. Throughout the semester, I sustained multiple cut wounds in my fingers as I carved linoleum to produce detailed prints. Thankfully for our end of the class assignment, the laser cutter would be my lovely assistant.

Initially, I chose to design a book cover for Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. The story is about four children who discover that they are clones who have been produced for the sole purpose of harvesting organs. I wanted to create a cover that featured human organs, but I realized that the laser cutter might not be able to engrave the details of a lung or heart, such as its blood vessels, at high fidelity. Of course I could simplify the illustrations, but that would have taken away the intricate beauty of our organs. Instead of risking a complicated design, I decided to select another one of my favorite books—1984 by George Orwell.

The story is set in a totalitarian regime where people are under constant supervision of the “Party,” ruled by Big Brother. They are deprived of free speech and even free thought, as the Party is enforcing a new language called Newspeak, which contains no words related to rebellion. The protagonist Winston Smith begins to write a secret diary containing all his hatred for the Party. As he falls in love with another anti-Party rebel Julia, his emotions against the Party heighten. One day, the both of them meet O’Brien, who claims to be a member of the anti-Party organization “the Brotherhood.” However, it turns out that O’Brien is Party spy, and ultimately the two of them are tortured into obedience.

The two main themes of 1984 in my opinion are control and supervision. I sketched out two designs for each theme.

The first design has to do with the oppression of supervision. Even though Winston tried to escape the sight of the Party and express his frustrations against them, he was ultimately caught and forced into submission.

The second design plays on the idea of manipulation. In Orwell’s totalitarian regime, people did not even have the freedom to think what they wanted. The fear of the Party induced people to act against their will. The last paragraph of the book describes Winston looking at an image of Big Brother, the leader of the party. It ends with the sentence, “He loved Big Brother.” The mind control in 1984 is so extreme that ultimately, Winston could not distinguish between his own will and the Party’s desires. He became the government’s puppet. I wanted to select a sharp, unsympathetic and soulless typeface, and decided on Avenir Next Condensed Regular.

The second design was less literal and illustrative than the first, so I proceeded to the IM lab to cut out a wood print for it. Luis advised that simply rastering the wood would not create a deep enough ridge for the print to be properly inked. He suggested that instead, I cut out the pieces I wanted to be inked, and paste them on a board.

Rastering my design

Pasting the pieces

Firstly, we rastered an A2 sized board to mark out where the individual pieces would go. Then, we cut out the design on another wood piece and glued them to the first board. We also rastered an acrylic board in case the wood texture created too much noise in the print.

The next day, Nino assisted me in the printing process. Using a roller, I applied oil paint to the blocks and set the paper on top. After applying pressure with another roller, the print was ready. Rather than using white paper, I experimented with colored paper, which I purchased from All Prints near Sama Tower. The power of prints is its replicability—the design is even more powerful when seen in different iterations.

Nino carefully inking the print

The wood created a beautiful grunge texture on the paper—it makes me think of the urban decay of London in 1984.

Overall, I am glad that I overestimated how much time it would take for me to complete the project. I was especially taken by surprise when it took over two hours to raster the acrylic print, which at the end of the day was not even usable. Now I have time to think about framing my work.

Many thanks to Luis and Nino for assisting me in the process.

Challenges of Arabic type design

April 11, 2016

Fonts.com boasts a grand 20,000 plus Latin font families. In contrast, Arabic only has 108 font families, and even fewer successful ones.

Arabic type design faces two main issues. Firstly, it has been subjected to Latin standards by non-Arabic speaking type designers for too long. When the printing press first came to the Ottoman Empire in the 18th century, Ottoman calligraphers avoided contact with the press operators who were printing works that overshadowed their own craft. Thus, the Europeans took the liberty of designing Arabic typefaces.

The Arabic writing system however, has a completely different anatomy compared to Latin—with its undershoots, connecting lines, and context-dependent glyphs—and not enough type designers have a native-level understanding of the language to manipulate these elements. As Mr. Wissam Shawkat said in his lecture on Thursday, one cannot simply chop off parts of Latin letters and integrate them into Arabic glyphs.

Secondly, there is a technological gap. Type designers for a long time did not have the proper software to create Arabic typefaces. Furthermore, the lag in technological advancements in certain areas of the Arab world has also produced a lag in the production of screen-friendly Arabic typefaces.

Recently, several designers have stood up to revolutionize Arabic type design. Peter Bil’ak and Kristyan Sarkis established the type foundry TPTQ Arabic, which is dedicated to “developing high quality Arabic typefaces”. To start off, TPTQ Arabic designed Greta, an Arabic typeface with 39 styles varying between four widths and ten weights. Like the Naskh writing form by which it was inspired, Greta is legible at small sizes, making it suitable for newspapers.

Greta typeface by Peter Bil’ak and Kristyan Sarkis. Photo courtesy of TPTQ

Calligrapher Samir Sayegh, who teaches at the American University of Beirut, is also raising a new batch of Arabic type designers. Former student Tarek Atrissi designed the Arabic typeface for Al Jazeera Television. Another former student Dr. Nadine Chahine designed Koufiya as her thesis project.

Tarek Atrissi Design’s Al Jazeera Television typeface. Photo courtesy of Tarek Atrissi Design

Nadine Chahine’s Koufiya typeface. Photo courtesy of Linotype

Yet the necessity for good Arabic type design stretches beyond aesthetics reasons. In The Daily Star article “Samir Sayegh’s typography revolution”, Chahine remarked, ““For me it was not OK that we have amazing typefaces in Latin and shitty typefaces in Arabic and when you put them side-by-side, the Arabic looks badly designed. It’s almost a reflection of who we are in comparison and that view is not acceptable from a political view, a cultural view, whatever. What I wanted was to have equality between the two.” All design is political. Some designs include, while other designs exclude. For example, building stairs instead of building ramps denies access to buildings for people in wheelchairs and thereby proclaims a message of discrimination against people with special needs—even if it was not intentional. Similarly, badly designed Arabic typefaces projects a poor impression against the people of the Arab world.

In addition, good Arabic type design encourages the art of calligraphy. As the Europeans took over and bastardized Arabic typography for two centuries, the role of the master calligrapher changed from that of an artist to a teacher of proper handwriting. Arabic speakers saw calligraphy as an example of good handwriting rather than as a piece of meditative thinking and divine inspiration. Yet as properly designed Arabic typefaces emerge, people can use digital means for efficient communication—thereby giving up the stage to calligraphy for artistic expression. Thanks to type design, calligraphy can return to its original form as as an art. As such, improvements of type design have much larger implications than simply enhancing legibility.

References

https://tptq-arabic.com/fonts/greta_text_arabic/about

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Culture/Lifestyle/2013/Jun-14/220286-samir-sayeghs-typography-revolution.ashx

http://www.wired.com/2015/10/why-its-so-hard-to-design-arabic-typefaces/

Type design and optical illusions

April 1, 2016

The human eye is easily deceived. Compare the lengths of these three lines:

Image courtesy of http://io9.gizmodo.com/

Clearly, the line in the center is the longest of the three. Yet when one actually measures their lengths, one realizes that they are all the same.

Image courtesy of http://io9.gizmodo.com/

Now, examine these pairs of characters. Which letter “O” is the same size as the letter “X” next to it?

The correct answer is the “O” on the left. Yet why does it appear smaller to the eye? This is a real life application of the Müller-Lyer illusion, which I shared at the start of this article. The “O”, which is a closed shape, bears resemblance to the line segment with the outward pointing arrows in the Müller-Lyer illusion. To accommodate for this, the “O” on the right pair has been designed with an overshoot and an undershoot. A type designer must keep his or her eyes peeled for these visual anomalies.

The “XO” pair on the left. Notice the letters are equal in height.

The “XO” pair on the right. The “O” has been adjusted with an overshoot and undershoot.

In addition to this example, Kevin Larson—Microsoft’s Advanced Reading Technology researcher, shared another optical illusion at his 2014 Seattle Nerd Night talk about type design. Take a look at Poggendorff’s optical illusion. Is line C a part of line A or line B?

Image courtesy of http://www.moillusions.com/

Most will say line A. But if one puts a straightedge against line C, one soon realizes that it is actually lines C and B that align. The Poggendorff illusion is pertinent when designing the letter “X”.

Image courtesy of http://io9.gizmodo.com/

The right crossbar is actually not one line segment, but two disjointed line segments.

I remember in the spring of my junior year, I had to photoshop a poster on a column as part of the Finding the Way class. I was looking up many tutorials online to find the correct series of commands to place the poster in the correct perspective, when Professor Puccetti made me stop everything I was doing. Instead of looking at tutorials, he told me to trust my eye and manually adjust the shape of the poster.

Similarly, typefaces cannot be produced through a series of computations performed by machines. Even in this digital age, a typeface is a craft made by designers who trust their eyes and manually push and pull anchor points. From the time of Garamond to the age of Glyphs, type design has been, and still will be, the work of the human eye and hand.

References:

Kevin Larson, The Art and Science of Reading

https://vimeo.com/79720653

Tactile Type

March 7, 2016

Before the age of screens and pixels, type designers and printers touched type. People used their hands to punchcut glyphs from steel and arranged them into lines of text. Their fingers were familiar with the counters of a lowercase a, or the shoulder of a lowercase n. What I’ve only encountered in the second dimension, they experienced in the third.

As I was studying the 13 typefaces that our class is expected to be able to distinguish, I wondered if it would be helpful for me not to just see the letters, but to feel them. I then remembered the alphabet puzzle mat that I use to cover the floor of my studio. Originally designed to be used in nurseries, the individual alphabets on the mat can be pulled out for children to play with. Using the laser cutter in the Interactive Media lab, I could make my own alphabet puzzle.

My Capstone Studio

First, I designed the puzzle on a piece of paper. I chose the pangram, “The quick fox jumped over the lazy dog,” and used a different typeface for each letter. Looking at a chart of the 13 typefaces that I made earlier, I selected letters that represented the characteristics of that particular typeface. For example, the lowercase i in Johnston has a diamond tittle. The lower case j in Futura is just a straight line. The diagonal stems of the lowercase k in Univers join at the same place.

As for the puzzle itself, it would require three different colored acrylic boards—one for the backing, one for the background, and one for the letters. I decided that the puzzle will have white text on a black background, and the puzzle will have a transparent backing. I made the design on Adobe Illustrator, and brought it to the IM lab.

The Illustrator file

Luis, the monitor for that day, helped me adjust the sizes of the acrylic boards to fit into the laser cutter.

Luis adjusting the dimensions of the acrylic boards

To begin with, we engraved the typefaces names into the black acrylic board. Then, we cut out the individual alphabets. We repeated that step with the white acrylic board. Finally, we cut the clear acrylic into the size of the puzzle.

Typefaces labels getting engraved in the laser cutter

After punching out the letters and peeling off the protective adhesive, I glued the clear backing to the black background, and let it sit.

Punching out letters

Two hours later, I came back to a finished puzzle.

The finished product

Unfortunately, the capital T went missing...better print it again.

Being able to see glyphs in three dimensional form has helped me notice the subtle differences between typefaces. For example, I can really distinguish the shapes of the serifs in Bodoni, Palatino, and Garamond. I feel fortunate to have such a powerful equipment like the laser cutter so easily accessible. Many thanks to Luis for helping me use the machinery.

Hello, Glyphs

February 29, 2016

On this particular leap day of 2016, I was feeling especially ambitious. So I decided to download a 30-day free trial of Glyphs, a font editing software written by Georg Seifert who is himself a type designer. Reading a sketching tutorial available on the Glyphs website, I learned that the lowercase n is the best letter to start with as its stems and shoulder can be extrapolated to create lowercase m, u, r, h, and i. I looked at my exercise from last Thursday and picked out an n.

I scanned it and cleaned it up a bit in Photoshop so that when I image trace it in Illustrator, the extra pixels from my pencil-drawn baseline and x-height don’t get in the way.

My lower case n, cleaned up on Photoshop

Converted to vector on Illustrator using Image Trace command

One convenient feature of Glyphs is that one can easily paste vector shapes into it from Illustrator. All you have to do is command+C, command+V.

Start a new project on Glyphs by going to File> New. Pick the lower case n from the menu. Copy and paste the Illustrator image into Glyphs.

Oh wow! It looks perfect!...so I thought. Upon closer inspection, I noticed a lot of bumps and grooves.

My Illustrator vector image is far from perfect. The green circles mark the nodes at the curves, and the blue triangles marks where the corners should be.

Time for some smoothing out. I began deleting excess nodes from my n. The same can be achieved by selecting the Paths > Tidy Up Paths command.

I also adjusted the overshoots so that they went over the x-height. By selecting the two nodes on the overshoots and selecting Paths > Align Selection, you guarantee that the overshoots are both at the same height. Do the same with the bottom two nodes to make sure that both ends of the n are sitting on the baseline.

Better get rid of this extra node!

Move up the green node to create an overshoot.

The type tool at the top lets you type your new glyph.

Now, if you flip the n horizontally and vertically, you also have a u. Delete everything except the shoulder of the n, and attach it to a complete n, and you have an m.

Of course, a lowercase u cannot be created by simple flip transformations. This lowercase u needs some adjusting as the lower left curve looks to heavy and extends too far to the left.

A lowercase m derived from a lowercase n.

Glyph is a very powerful tool that welcomes any person to the world of type design. Manipulating the minutest nodes of my letters, I felt a greater appreciation toward type designers whose typefaces I use on a daily basis without second thought .

Be nice to your future self

February 15, 2016

Several psychology journals have published studies investigating the physiological and cognitive effects of practicing Chinese calligraphy. For example, previous experiments have found that engaging in Chinese calligraphy slows heart rate and respiration, and lowers blood pressure. Another study found that a ten-day calligraphy training program raised levels of theta waves, a wave necessary for connecting different brain areas. Extrapolating from these results, practicing calligraphy may lead to a change in the cognitive wiring of the brain.

In 2009, Atsuo Murata, Goshiro Yamamoto and Makoto Morikawa of Okayama University conducted an experiment to compare the hand-eye coordination of beginner and advanced Japanese calligraphers. One skilled calligrapher, who had been practicing calligraphy for 47 years, and three novices participated. The participants used a brush connected to a motion sensor to write six Chinese characters. An eye tracker also collected data on the position of their gaze.

The results of the experiment showed that the beginner participants tended to keep their gaze focused on a small area of the paper, namely the region near the first stroke. On the other hand, the experienced calligrapher looked at a larger portion of the paper. Furthermore, the advanced calligrapher’s gaze did not focus on the current stroke, but looked forward to the next stroke. In other words, an advanced calligrapher can predict the look of his or her finished product. Nothing comes as a surprise.

Comparison of gaze between novice and experienced calligrapher. Photo courtesy of Okayama University.

Despite the severely small sample size of participants in the study and the difference in writing systems, I think there are lessons worth taking from this study. During the “adenos” practice activity last Thursday, Professor Puccetti kept reminding us to think ahead and imagine the larger composition. Especially when we were asked to write “adenos” backwards from the letter “s,” I realized the importance of predictive skill in calligraphy. Calligraphy is a carefully planned and calculated art form. Once I place one letter on a piece of paper, the balance of the entire work is decided. By thinking one step ahead, the calligrapher takes control over the composition. The final product therefore speaks of the calligrapher’s authority—over his or her hands, mind and work.

In fact, thinking one step ahead isn’t just a calligrapher’s motto. It extends to all parts of life. Who will I interview for my recipes? Where will I get voice recorder and camera for my interviews? How long does it take for me to write an interview down? How much in advance do I have to contact the printers for a quote? By digesting these thoughts ahead of time, I prevent foreseeable problems and maintain authority over every part of my project. In other words, it’s a way to be nice to my future self.

References:

Xu, M., Kao, H. S. R., Zhang, M., Lam, S. P. W., & Wang, W. (2013). Cognitive-neural effects of brush writing of chinese characters: Cortical excitation of theta rhythm. Evidence - Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine,doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/975190

Murata, A., Yamamoto, A., Morikawa, M. (2009). Skill of Eye-Hand Coordination in Calligraphy - Difference of Skill of Hand-Eye Coordination between Expert and Novice. Fifth International Workshop on Computational Intelligence & Applications.

The heart of calligraphy: Comparing Japanese & Western calligraphy

February 8, 2016

Japanese children receive their first calligraphy kit when they reach the third grade. To improve their handwriting, children study the anatomy of Chinese characters and learn to balance the various elements of the letters with the brush. Yet calligraphy class is not just a study of letters. Rather, it is an opportunity to be in touch with one’s body and mind, a chance to practice correct posture and concentration.

Third graders practicing calligraphy in Semba Elementary School. Photo courtesy of Semba Elementary School.

A display of students’ calligraphy work— a common sight in Japanese elementary school hallways. Photo courtesy of Notsuke Elementary School.

In Japan, we also say that one who has clean handwriting has a clean heart. The state of one’s heart appears in the works of their hands. Thus the letter, the body and the spirit are intertwined. People and letters share a reciprocal relationship—while the calligrapher gives life and form to the letter, and the letter in return enriches the calligrapher’s body and mind. Through such teachings, the appreciation of the “letter” is very much engraved in the hearts of Japanese people from a young age.

It is therefore strange to me why American schools don’t teach their students Western calligraphy. Perhaps as the inventors of the printing press, the Western world would rather forget the time when scribes hand-copied manuscripts. Maybe calligraphy is considered an obsolete art. Yet after the workshop on Thursday, I found that Western calligraphy shares much of the same benefits praised in Japanese calligraphy. Namely, it is a study of self-reflection and self-discipline—learning to evaluate one’s own work and practicing, practicing, practicing without end. It is a battle against the self; a fight to beat an older, less skilled self. The invention of presses and keyboards has not killed, but elevated the status of calligraphy.

On the other hand, I also noticed different standards of beauty in Western and Japanese calligraphy. The beauty of Western calligraphy lies in the expression of curves. In the Roman letters, the curves almost look tangible, as if I could run my fingers against them. The expression of three dimension on a two dimensional plane characterizes Western calligraphy. Another feature of Western calligraphy is accuracy. There is always the presence of the baseline, x-height, and cap height. Looking at carefully drawn alphabets, one cannot help but be in awe by the patience and precision of the scribe or artist.

In Japanese calligraphy, the art lies at the ends of the strokes. The three types of endings—the “tome (stop)”, “hane (jump)”, and “harai (release),” determine the personality and beauty of the letter.

Photo courtesy of KanjiArt.net

Furthermore, the true “flavor” of Japanese calligraphy comes from varied brushstrokes. Just as emotion in music is conveyed through crescendos and diminuendos, legatos and staccatos, emotion in Japanese calligraphy is conveyed through the dynamism of brushstrokes. By looking at the separation of bristles, one can imagine the pressure at which the calligrapher pressed his or her brush against the paper. One can imagine the passion with which the calligrapher breathed life into the letters. Occasionally the strokes are so exaggerated that the final product is illegible. Western calligraphy is meant to be read. Japanese calligraphy is meant to be felt.

“Feel” by Takeda Souun. Photo courtesy of Futaba Shodoukai.

Though I am used to the freedom of Japanese calligraphy, I hope to find joy in the accurate art of Western calligraphy. I hope it will train me to be cautious, patient, and meticulous—three virtues of a good designer.

Rome through my eyes

Illustrations from my explorations of Rome

Reflections

If I don't do anything, nothing happens.

It sounds painfully obvious, but this is the most important lesson I learned in this class.

I enrolled in this class because I wanted to make something. And I know that I made the correct decision, because when I enter the Arts Center, I see our main map. And when I walk by the Red Theater, I see George's artwork on the fire door. I occasionally see people referring to our floor maps, and the fire door is already becoming a landmark. As the first Wayfinding class in NYUAD, we did the unprecedented and made a definite difference.

However, when I look back on our journey up until now, I realize that it took a while for us to actually open up an Illustrator document and start making things. Of course, our initial research was crucial. There was no way we could have proceeded with the project without basic knowledge on best practices, or what other members of the community wanted to see in the Arts Center. However, I feel like we could have benefited more from prototyping earlier and testing our products. Moreover, the timeline that we created at the beginning of the semester should have been like our god. That timeline, not the syllabus or our own schedules, should have been dictating our next steps. If we had respected that schedule, we could have avoided the last minute errors and rushes that we are paying the price for right now.

And lastly, about proactivity. When we have big goals in mind, it is easy to forget that there are many small steps in between that make that goal possible. For example, if we want to decorate the fire doors with stickers, then the problem is not simply, "Who's going to print them, and how will we put them up?" We need to first measure the doors, ask artists to contribute artwork, wait for their submissions, create a document of the design, go to the printers to confirm the print, retrieve the stickers, find a ladder, find the time to put up the stickers, and then only when these things were complete could we put the stickers up. I feel like at one point, we were acting as if these things were going to sort itself out. I cannot stress more the importance communicating and asking each other questions like, "Who will do what and when?" and volunteering to take action. At this age, we should not need anyone to tell us what to do. If we set out to do something, then the next steps should be obvious to us. And unless we start acting upon them, nothing happens. At the same time, however, while it is important to volunteer to do things, I truly regret not depending on my classmates in the process of creating the designs of the fire doors, because it resulted in an expensive mistake that I do not want to repeat again.

Despite the fact that I made many mistakes throughout the course, I feel blessed that I made these them in this safe environment where I have the mercy of second chances. As a designer, I needed to have learned these lessons and I am glad this class gave me the opportunity to become a "new" person who will not make the same mistakes.

Picture day

Last class we settled on a standard design for the final presentation posters. We will have eleven A1 sized posters in total, each featuring a full-bleed image and a header, which will be in a form of a question. It is a time-saving solution compared to my idea from the previous week. Moreover, the idea forces us to limit the amount of textual information so that our posters don’t become a science presentation, and that we only share what will be interesting to our readers.

Our plan for the headers and images are as follows:

What is wayfinding? (image of signs on the highline)

What’s going on in the Arts Center? (image of sign next to elevator)

I work here - want to hear from me? (image of someone we interviewed)

Why so serious, did you ever have fun? (image of someone’s pictogram project)

Okay, so what’s the plan? (image of timeline)

Sans Serif - you win again. (image of sans serif typefaces)

Fifty Shades of the Arts Center (image of our color scheme and how color blind people see it)

So what did we do then? (image of someone using the YAH map/main map)

Continued (image of the room signs and firedoors)

May I suggest? (image of Mariko on a wheelchair)

What next? (image of somewhere on campus)

Finn and I went around campus today to take the photos for our posters. We tried to experiment with the angle where possible since they are the only images we'll be using on the posters, and we'll be featuring them quite largely.

Photographer Finn

Overall I’m satisfied with the quality of the photos (you can see them on the Drive) and the teamwork between Finn and I.

Desperate Mariko

Poster sketches

Today I had time to sketch five of the posters for our final presentation. First and foremost, I really would like to incorporate a sense of humor and friendliness into the presentation, since it would be such a waste of an opportunity if our posters ended up looking like one of those science presentations if we were not given any constraints. For example, to illustrate the existing problems in the Arts Center, I want the second poster to be a tragic comic on a student who attempts to find a room in the Arts Center and ends up getting caught in a fire because he could not find an emergency exit.

I also want to invite readers to come really up close to the posters and be engrossed in them. To achieve that, I want to incorporate large graphics and headlines, but small explanatory text. The Q and A format headlines are also a way to invite readers to come and think about wayfinding with us.

Sense of place

Last Thursday, Professor Casati brought in a sextant, a star wheel, and a map to give the class a first-hand experience of "analog" wayfinding.

Although I very much enjoyed learning how to use the various devices, my first reaction was, "Is this practical or just for fun?" The hands-on activity definitely furthered the point that navigation is computation. For example, using the polar star as a landmark and measuring its angular distance from the horizon, people on sea can figure out their latitude. Yet even when I found the tools impressive, I could not relate to them.

One feature of wayfinding I traced throughout Professor Casati's lecture, though, was how "in touch" people were to their environment. People had a deep understanding of how land, sea, and star could communicate location. The introduction of GPS, however, has detached navigation from its environment. With a GPS, one no longer needs to listen to the cues of the environment.

Claudia Aporta and Eric Higgs investigated this transition from analog to digital wayfinding in their research on the consequences of GPS use on Inuit Wayfinding. The elderly Inuit population used wind, tides, stars, snow and animal behavior as navigational guides. There was also an oral tradition attached to wayfinding— the elderly would often give detailed, step by step procedures on how to reach a destination in order to teach the youth the dangers of the terrain. With the debut of the GPS, younger generations of Inuits became more dependent on the gadgets, which were easier to master than their fathers' methods. As Albert Borgmann's device paradigm views technology, the GPS has freed the Inuits from the extra efforts of reading the environment. Yet at the same time, by rendering traditional territorial knowledge useless, it has also deprived them of their identity as Inuits.

Perhaps this is why I could not fully appreciate the wayfinding tools we used on Thursday. For me, wayfinding is the act of getting from point A to point B; and though this simple definition is sufficient, it loses something in its succintness—a sense of place. It keeps us from looking up and appreciating the character of the location. Actually, this "sense of place" is something people have been asking to establish in the Arts Center as well. In our survey, many people voted to make the Arts Center look "artsy." Of course, the standardized signs and maps are necessary. Once those are in place, however, I feel that more efforts need to be spent on installing artistic landmarks beyond our fire doors.

Of course, I am not going to start carrying a compass in my pocket from tomorrow—but the story of the Inuits has motivated me to be more “human” in my wayfinding and tune into my surroundings.

Reference:

Claudia Aporta and Eric Higgs. Satellite Culture: Global Positioning Systems, Inuit Wayfinding, and the Need for a New Account of Technology. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/432651

Biodiversity of wayfinding

I have a confession: I cannot read maps.

When I arrived in London for my semester abroad in Spring 2015, the first thing I did was to get a phone plan—not so that I could make calls, but so that I could use Google Maps anywhere with my data plan.

My biggest problems is that I cannot manipulate spatial information in my head, to the point that I suspect myself of having topographical amnesia. When Mr. Casati told us how he understood the Saadiyat campus through his morning jog, I could not relate to his experience because I am not able to remember changes in direction long enough to create a mental map of my path. Thus, in most of my wayfinding scenarios, I am in remote control mode, as Professor Casati calls it. For me, a broken GPS means game over.

Yet wayfinding is more than mapreading. Because I can't read a map, the only other way I can navigate myself alone without a GPS is by landmarks. Indeed, Professor Casati mentioned modifying the environment as a wayfinding aid—such as a landmark that aligns perfectly from a certain angle to signify the direction of a port. This reminded me of Per Mollerup's point that an environment should be "self-explanatory." If an environment does not explain itself, then just the right number of signs should fix the problem. These markers are available so that we do not have to rely on GPS or even maps.

Though our class has been focusing on signage, Professor Casati shined light on the reality that wayfinding is "biodiverse," we can use signs or landmarks or the sun or the wind to find out our orientation.

At the same time, however, I can't deny that people will continue to rely heavily on GPS technology in wayfinding. Professor Casati mentioned that humans operate on a system 1 (automatic processing) and system 2 (slow processing). We saw how ordering train times in chronological order in a timetable pushes the stress of data interpretation from the memory system onto the visual system. In a similar way, GPS takes on the stress of orienting oneself, checking transportation schedules, and estimating time of arrival. GPS is my customizable you-are-here map. People will always gravitate toward the easy choice—GPS over offline maps. Along this line, In favor of this tendency, I believe technology will continue to make GPS a less fragile and a more reliable and widespread.

How many of us know how to build a fire? I suspect few of us, because now we have a electric stove in our homes. Along the same trend, perhaps map reading and cognitive map making will become an obsolete skill.

Three steps ahead

The first thing I want to do when I go back to Tokyo is to ride a train.

According to Wikipedia, the Tokyo transport system is composed of 158 lines run by 48 operators (excluding bullet train lines). To guide millions of passengers on their way daily, the Tokyo transport network makes use of very meticulous signage. The motto of the wayfinding system is: think three steps ahead.

One of my favorite signs in the Tokyo metro is this:

Photo via Planmetro.com

On the left is a list of stations. The red line marks which car door will open (left or right). This is extremely important information for commuters during rush hour—it lets them know which half of the car to push toward when they board the train. You don’t want to be on the wrong side of the car in a situation like this:

Photo via Pixgood.com

The row of numbers on the right represent the car number. A colored car number indicates that it is close to an exit, bathroom or escalator. By providing passengers with information about what’s coming up next, this sign allows passengers to plan out their journey and get to their destination without any surprises.

Another feature of the Tokyo metro is its floor signage. When multiple lines use the same track, these signs inform passengers where to stand on the platform.

Photo via Planmetro.com

Lastly, Tokyo metro came up with a series of funny pictograms to raise awareness of train etiquette.

Photo via Gakuran.com

Photo via Loopinsight.com

Photo via News3yen.com

As we learned in the impossible pictogram assignment, humor naturally creates conversation and leaves a lasting impression. By pulling a joke, Tokyo metro in a sense takes the issue of train etiquette very seriously, communicating manners to children, adults, and foreigners in a way that will stick in their minds.

Carrying on with our Arts Center project, we are on our way to helping visitors plan their route by thinking three steps ahead for them. In addition to our main maps, we will install nine “you-are-here” maps. I am excited to be testing our prototypes already, and look forward to installing new landmarks: the fire door stickers.

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