Thesis Bibliography

Here are some books that I found that can be used as good resources for my thesis research...

ON IMMIGRATION

Bochner, Furnham, and Ward. The Psychology of Culture Shock. East Susses: Routledge, 2001.

Kim, Young Yun. Communication and Cross-Cultured Adaption. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd, 1988.

McKay, Dave. "The Opportunity of Immigration." Canadian Immigrant 7.4(2010): 34.

ON WAYFINDING

Gibson, David. The Wayfinding Handbook Information Design for Public Places. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009.

Krippendorff, Klaus. On Communicating Otherness, Meaning, and Information. New York: Routledge, 2009.

Michel, Ralf. Design Research Now: Essays and Selected Projects. Basel: Birkhauser, 2007.

Rufte, Edward R. Envisioning Information. Connecticut: Graphics Press, 1990.

Uebelle, Andreas. Signage Systems & Information Graphics: A Professional Sourcebook. United Kingdom: Thames&Hudson, 2007.

Wierzbicka, Anna. Semantics Primes and Universals. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Thesis Proposal Ideas/Questions

1. To explore areas in immigrants in Canada, specifically the City of Toronto.

• How do newcomers orient themselves in Toronto?
• How do they find information regarding government services such as community centers, ELS classes?
• What are the first steps in settling in the city?
• How can design help in terms of presenting useful information of city services to them?
• How can I represent information in ways that communicate to citizens who are not fluent in English and catch their attention?

2. Designing a complete wayfinding system for both Design and Art departments.

• How do students find their ways in the building?
• How did they get used to the way each rooms are divided?
• Is there a difference (such as needs)between the art and the design students?
• How can I encourage students from different discipline to interact more with a new wayfinding system?
• How do visitors approach the building in a stranger's perspective?
• How does OCAD projects itself in terms of a designed approach in wayfinding(if it even has one)?
• How consistent is the building right now and what are the improvements?

3. Designing a clear wayfinding system for the underground pathway for Toronto.

• What are the cues people look for when they are lost and in a hurry?
• How do people feel when they are disoriented in an underground area with various pathes that may lead to many destinations?
• What are the quickest and friendliest ways to direct people in an underground environment? Who are the users and what difference does it make?

Ecochair

Of all the ways we can use cardboard, 6 students from Denmark carried on the re-usable character of the versatile material, and created a series of multifunctional Ecochairs.
The chair can easily be transformed into a bed and even a chaiselong because of the folding system. Eco is made from reused corrugated cardboard and cotton. The glue, that is made for gluing the sheets together, is made from cornflour and does not affect the recycling process. This is very inspiring to me because the students took something so simple and tangible in everyday life, then cleverly transformed it into an object that functions with multiple options to utilize. Click here to visit their website.

Breaking out of the 2-D plane

When we are studying graphic design, we're mostly dealing with 2-dimensional planes, unless it is packaging design. When my 3rd Wayfinding project was assigned, we were asked to design a wayfinding system, and our objective was to successfully combine functional design with expressive signage.

Here are some inspirational wayfinding systems that breaks the 2-dimentional planes, and begin to effectively incorporate the system into the architecture.

Docks En Seine

Nicolas Vrignaud, a French designer who developed

the wayfinding and graphics for the Docks En Seine

through Jakob+MacFarlane.

Brunswick Centre, London

Hodgkinson revisits the old, out of date site.

guardian newspaper

About Information Design in Wayfinding Class

Before I started my Wayfinding class back in the beginning of the second semester, I had many assumptions about what wayfinding is. (later I was told to never assume anything in design...) I took it straight from the meaning of the word - to look for directions. It must be associated with legibility, and articulate messages in directions, and lots and lots of arrows.

Up until now, Wayfinding consists of much more than my early presumptions. It is consisted of two major components: information design and signage/wayfinding system design. In the beginning of the class, we did an exercise in information design, where we were taught how to organize mass information into a clear and visually dynamic way. The keywords were hierarchy, micro, macro, and relational graphics.

We were recommended a book called Envisioning Information by Edward R. Tufte. I was immediately fascinated by how the information can be much more clear when the unnecessary elements are eliminated. Simplicity is the key. In one of the LAYERING AND SEPARATION chapters, Tufte pointed out that 1+1 = 3 or more.

"In the simplest case, when we draw two black lines, a third visual activity results, a bright white path between the lines. And a complexity of marks generates an exponential complexity of negative shapes. Most of the time, that surplus visual activity is non-information, noise, and clutter." p61.

Here are some final results with my project. The objective was to design a One Day Sports Schedule for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. My initial attempt was to use a gradient of colours as a suggestion for various time periods of the day.

The problem was that the colours are from dark to light, therefore it is difficult to differenciate the background from the actual information in the foreground, which lead to my second solution: I changed the background to a horizontal grey grid, divided the sports into On Land and In Water. I also added a coloured column for the indication of "Noon".

Week 6 Reading

The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action
By Donald Schon

There are aspects of knowledge where we cannot learn in a formal education, such as school and textbooks. - Auguste Comte expressed the three principal doctrines of positivism: empirical science was the only source of positive knowledge of the world; and intention to cleanse men’s minds of mysticism, superstition, and other forms of pseudokowledge; and to make technology primarily political and moral. In technical rationality perspective, professional practice is a process of problem solving. Problem solving must be broken down before it is solved in the real world. This is where practical knowledge takes place, reflecting in knowing, improve and redirect one's position while solving an unique problem. There is also reflecting in action, such as a performing jazz musician whom is composing on the spot. Therefore, knowing in practice allows one to become a natural researcher in the practice context, where new theories are drawn based on reflections of experience.

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Semiotics: A Primer for Designers
By Challis Hodge

Semiotics: the study of sings that represents anything, it is derived from Greek: semeton, sign. It originated from a Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure suggests that it is the existence of general science of signs, which can be applied to any system. Voloshinov observed that the sign is not in relation to other signs but rather in social context of its use.

Semantics: what it means

Semiotics: how does the sign mean

Week 5 Reading

I Come to Bury Graphic Design
By Kenneth Fitzgerald

This was a difficult read for me, it too myself many tries to get to the last page. Here is my effort to try to describe and analyze this reading.

To graphic designers, the discipline in general revolves with improving our live by problem solving. Designers are more and more interested in vernacular content. The problem with graphic design is that it is full of ego to change the world, that essentially it is a job that cannot exist without an application. Fitzgerald quoted others: opinions on designer's interest in the vernacular is uncritical and that it is a quest for academic legitimacy. However, some have argued that design is a “…fundamental humanist communications discipline…” In my opinion, design holds a responsibility that cannot be replaced nor removed by any other discipline. Design can, however, be interwoven into many other disciplines such as architecture, marketing, psychology and perception, etc. I think that it is valid for Graphic Design to become more involved with, and more evolved into academic studies, therefore its goal is not to search for legitimacy or approval but to merge with other academic disciplines to conquer new problems.

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Why Designers Can't Think
By Michael Bierut

Young high school students are accepted to design schools without prior knowledge of graphic design. Waiting for these students to enter, are the "process" type of schools and the "slickness" type of schools. Process schools offer Swiss-style education imported from Basel, where "slickness" focuses on the product and the polished portfolios. However, both are missing something as part of graphic design education - the interdisciplinary studies that help students to broaden their knowledge and dig deep into the content of the subject they are designing rather than scratching the surface with knowledge restricted within the visual world.