This project had me stumped for a while, it was the first project where I didn't leave the briefing with an idea, which was a bit uncomfortable after having felt on top of what I was doing for the past 6 briefs so early on.
I've been thinking to myself: "graphic design is not art" which is hopefully controversial, because it's a topic I'd like to talk about and it's hard to get people to talk back when nobody's put out by what you say. I don't think it is though. Having read "A picture of Dorian Gray" back in October by Oscar Wilde I've been quite happy with the definition of art that it is something that has no purpose than to be admired. This to me works better than anything I'd thought before. Art doesn't need to be pretty, or thought provoking, or ground breaking, it just needs have no function other than to be admired, it needs to be useless outside of the quality of being admired.
And graphic design is not purely created to be admired, it is done to convey a message, to communicate some point, to serve a purpose or some sort of useful function.
My favourite example for this argument is the fire exit sign. That is a good piece of graphic design. It is understood by all, it is clear and succinct. It communicates its message with clarity universally to the world. It is not art. I admire the fire escape sign because it is such a good piece of design, but to be admired is certainly not its main function, and so it is not art, it is good design.
I'm not saying good graphic design shouldn't look attractive, but it is the clear communication of its idea that makes it good design, not how aesthetically pleasing it is. With this in mind I decided what I wanted was to create a set of icons that could convey a message to anyone without a key.
I started off thinking of things that people have trouble communicating, I love you, I'm sorry, etc. This was either blindingly obvious (a heart) or impossible (a man on his knees begging for forgiveness could just as easily represent a chap proposing marriage, or a samurai bowing down to be executed etc) then I thought about emotions, because they can be sort of hard to express for some people, and hard to read for others. I drew out these faces, with colours, for all the emotions according to Earl, but as when I tested it out on Grace with the 5 from the negative and forceful section she only got angry right. I thought: well if someone struggles this much (like she'd been quite wrong with the other 4, despite me drawing them exactly how someone looks when feeling irritated or disgusted according to an average of peoples faces from google images) then clearly this is too difficult to communicate. And besides, they were bloody smileys at the end of the day. All of these :D and :P type things have been around for ages and perfected by other people, there really wasn't anywhere to take :@ to new.
So I started thinking a bit closer to home. I live in East Ham, where there is a very mixed ethnicity population, which is good; Prices are low and there's a good variety of goods. But I thought perhaps this range of ethnicity could be something I appeal to, a universal code for East Ham that could be understood by anyone.
So, the brief I set myself was: "Create a universal language for where you live" because what's better communication than something that can be understood by anyone? And good graphic design is good communication.
I restricted myself to East Ham high street, because it has markers at each end denoting where the ends are, and otherwise I could end up going forever. I mean, there's no line in the road where it says this side is East Ham this side is Plaistow, but for East Ham high street (or high street north) there is. I walked up the high street and recorded what each shop sold in a little diary, then I created symbols that sometimes by themselves are enough to tell you what a shop sells, and other times combining a few symbols together gave you the impression of what it sold.
Here are my symbols:
And here is the map of East Ham high street that I believe should be readable to anyone:
