Camelot Village-affordable country living…yet you can’t find your way.
I always thought this sign was so esoteric. Under the reflection of this project I am convinced it is. This development boasts “country living”, right off a main highway. Really? I think they use the word “affordable” first, before country living, to attract attention. It is also ironic because just to the left of the frame you can see the side of the sign for Hillcrest Commercial Park. That doesn’t seem to signify country living-right next to a commercial park. Irony again. (The commercial park is really storage units that reside on the right of the driveway into Camelot village development). In terms of sign design, green on white is one of the high visibility color recommendations (esigns). The sign is lit up at night and very clear. The landscaping around the sign is attractive and does draw the eye to it.
Signs
For people looking to move into Camelot Village, their first stop is the sales office. The sales office is on the left, but it looks like any other house in the development. The sales office sign points straight down the road. In front of the office, there are no signs indicating it is the office. The next building that is visible is this:
Which again is not signed and is actually the mail boxes for the residents. If you drive past this building all that remains are homes. It becomes clear after driving for a while that the other possibility for the sales office is the house in the front of the development. “People need information to make and execute decisions” (Passini, P. 89). This is the basic principle of wayfinding. The first experience in the development results in frustration and difficulty making sense of where things are.
Maps
The directory map makes one thing clear; this is going to be a confusing journey. As you can see the colors indicate multiple streets. The red indicates seven different streets. “Color is an effective way to convey differentiation” (Baer, p. 90). In this case, the color only differentiates sections of the village instead of signifying different streets. Well, hopefully the streets and appropriately marked.
Street confusion
As you drive down the first street in the villiage, you come upon this intersection, that is the main street merging to the left and right, while it continues on straight ahead, except on a slant. The sign to the left is the only street sign and is obscured by the branches. If you chose to go right, you come upon a sign that is all the way past the intersection.
The confusion within the development continues all the way through, with missing signs, unclear directions, few marked houses, and streets that seemingly end before a marked start of the next one.
The street ends where?
Most street intersections look like this. There is one sign marking the cross street (the street to the left) while the street you are on is not identified. The road curves off to the right and starts a new road. There is no sign at the end to signify the street changed and the houses just before the road curves are actually assigned the new streets address.
Audience
This development is poorly signed and the maps are difficult at best. The audience for these directions cannot be prospective tenants. Even people who move in take a few months to fully understand where streets start and stop. Some of the older tenants never quite figure out which street merges into another one.
Design and Structure
The design of the development, the placement of homes and streets, actually is laid out very well. The structure makes sense and logically, seems to make navigational sense. The homes all are set on the property in a logical way considering the homes around it. The streets in the back, on the borders of the development, have a wooded area and storage units. The storage units are not obtrusive and are hidden on the edges of the property. The mail unit and sales office are in logical places and easy to get to. The basket ball court is centrally located and on a main street. The navigational difficulty is the signage and street directory. The village developers paid little attention to the users of the village and failed to conduct usability tests. The signs and map certainly fail to meet user-centered design standards.
References
Baer, Kim. Information Design Workbook. Beverly, MA: Rockport Publishers, 2008. Print.
Passini, Romedi. ”Sign-Posting Information Design” Information Design. Ed. Robert Jacobson. London: MIT, 2000. 83-98. Print.
Interesting post. I used to work for a property management company that handled subdivision communities finances and some of them are very confusing to get around. Lack of signage and poorly designed neighborhoods are not user friendly and the developer should have someone on staff that understands how these things work. Your narrative flowed really well and it was easy to go from one area to the next without getting lost. The images went perfectly with the narrative and helped explain what was being stated in the text.
ReplyDeleteThe elements within this piece have been arranged by repetition with the images and their geometric rectangle shapes. All are same size and in the same position of the design as you move through it. Hard implied lines are created by the edge of the shapes and it’s the horizontal and vertical lines in combination communicate a message of stability and solidity. It is the three dimensional shapes depicted that produce depth as well as width and height. Two dimensional forms created the illusion of three dimensional shapes. It is these spaces which are created that balance the negative and positive space within the design. The shapes show the contrast of color against a white background. The color red seen in the fonts appears to repeat throughout the design giving the meaning of being energetic, exciting, and passionate.
ReplyDeleteThe designer is concerned with the elements and principles of art and design as the design is clean, simple and easy to understand. The purpose of the work is to show the simplicity of information design without information overload and its importance in our daily lives. The title, “Camelot Village-affordable country living…yet you can’t find your way” provides clues to the meaning of the work. The designer is conveying social and cultural experiences through her work. It is through the two dimensional shapes that show how people live.
The chosen elements create an effective message and successfully communicate how important simply information design is to the user in wayfinding and/or lack of it. The color of the text in red stood out when I first viewed the design. The art movement that might have inspired the designer is, Classicism because it characterizes by harmony, balance, and serenity. If I had to choose a title for this piece, I would name it, “Camelot Village? No Signage! No way.”
I don’t think the quality of this work needs improving as the meaning is clear and convincing. The design is straight forward and I don’t believe there are multiple meanings as the designer conveys a clear message. The designer has accomplished what she set out to do.
Good job!!!
Danelle Wolfe
Fabulous post!
ReplyDeleteI like that you changed the back and foreground to match your posts and felt this one was so clean an easy to read and generally appropriate. I liked your use of humor here – it added an entire new dimension to your work!
Great use of pictures as visual aid tools – I remember reading the book The Hobbit, and they were always talking about the rolling land and the path at the edge that snaked here or there- I could never visually follow where the author led – these pictures made following your directive a snap.
Reading this post, actually has me feeling the frustration of trying to find something that is so poorly indicated as to be impossible to follow. The one good thing about this complex is that it is small enough that when you figure out where you need to go, you are not too far away from getting back to it – that is if you can find your way back…
Great use of titles and color to make for easy reading and understanding. Nice inclusion of map – good use of repetition of color and shape.
All in all, great blog post!
It was wonderful taking this class with you, thanks for sharing and good luck in all your future endeavors!
Shayna Horowitz