OUGD404 Design Principles: Studio Brief 01 - What is Visual Literacy?

OUGD404 Design Principles: Studio Brief 01 - What is Visual Literacy?

Icons, Symbols Logo's

For this task we had to redesign and think about the current universal fire escape logo. While looking into different designs and colours, we ultimately decided to keep the same design as we believed it did not need changing. We found that green was the best colour as green links in with the first aid national logo, it also emits safety and calmness amongst us, rather than other colours we tried such as red, which conveys, danger, angriness and yellow, which relates to hazard signs which conveys hazardous and danger as well - therefore not suitable for a safety fire escape sign. We also looked into the different symbols on the icon. We felt that the door and arrow were necessary to keep as it clearly indicated that this is the fire escape door, while we also felt it was necessary not to put any words into the sign so that it can be used universally not just nationally. On the other hand what we did change was the 'running man' and changed it into a swiftly walking person as when in this emergency situation, you should swiftly exit and not rush and cause chaos, it also contributes to conveying calmness while also a sense of urgency. Another element of our design was to make the sign curved, so that it could be viewable from all angles rather than flat. The main characteristic however of our signs was the speaker feature. This enables the blind to be able to hear the sirens which will be in two different tones so that they can clearly hear where the noise will be coming from, so that they can also direct themselves to the fire escape. Overall I'm really pleased with all the different features of our design, it makes is it more accessible to everybody while also keeping the national fire escape design as we felt it did not need changing. At the end of the discussion, John discussed with us what he expected from the outcomes, and encouraged us to think outside the box such as led lights on the wall flashing to guide you to the nearest fire escape door. Furthermore, he stated that do some designs and logo even need re designing? If they are useful and just as good as they are, why change them? I felt we achieved this as we also thought that the design did not need much changing at all, however I never thought of ideas such as not even having a logo, which definitely encourages me to think outside the box a bit more.