CD Studio III: Paint the Pavement

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Process Book

8 min readSep 22, 2016

Our studio professor Kristin Hughes introduced to this project by asking us to design a series of icons that conveyed the elements of a healthy community as a class. After completing the introductory phase of the project, we were given the real task: to create a pre-application for an audience of Pittsburgh that would persuade them to become a Paint the Pavement* community.
*Paint the Pavement is an organization that seeks to use the method of painting icons on the pavement at road intersections to raise awareness for traffic safety. Projects they’ve done in the past have been shown to encourage drivers to slow down at crosswalks, and consequently improve safety.

9.1 | Design an Icon

As a class, we brainstormed a list of words that make up a healthy community, not knowing what the intention was. At first, we came up with many nebulous words like “diversity,” “compassion,” and the such, but ultimately came up with more concrete and literal words when we were told that we would make icons based on these words.

The class coming together to brainstorm icons for their words.

Final List:

Animals, Policy, Medicine, Infrastructure, Exercise, Plants, Bikes,
Religion, Children, Libraries, Security, Rules, Food, Museums, Parks, Shelter, Social Events, Leaders (community champions), Friendships, Celebrations, Clean Resources, Restaurants, Art, Recycling, Weather, Flowers, Family, Hospital, Carnival, Birthdays, Ice Cream, Sunlight, Clean Energy, Business, Service, Accessibility, *Education, Transportation, Communication, Jobs, Entertainment, Health, Care, Diversity, Sports, Cars, Dogs, Apples

As a class, we were each given one word to work on. My word was “education,” and I tried to brainstorm it in various ways including metaphorical and literal ways.

I came up with a list of literal things you might find at a place intended for education as well as a list of metaphorical things that might be cognitively associated with education due to schemas and cultural experiences.

Literal:

glasses
graduation gown — people associate graduation with education
graduation cap
books
globe
university / institution
blackboard
classroom
students / teacher

Metaphorical:

apple
numbers / alphabet

Because we were making these icons together as a cohesive system, we wanted to establish an easy system for creating these icons to ensure that we applied the same treatment to our icons. We concluded that the icons should meet the following requirements:

setup: 5 x 5" square with 8x10" document
lineweight: 6pt and 10pt
colour: black and white

Keep compositional factors in mind when designing!

contrast
balance
negative space
rhythm

So far, the most successful icon seems to be the one with the graduation cap. The icon seems to be universally recognizable, hence a good direction to go. I was a little iffy in relating education purely to a symbol graduation because I felt that not all education implied graduation. However, a classmate brought up a good point that it worked on a top-down manner ; education didn’t necessarily involve graduation, but graduation always involves some degree of education. This makes a lot of sense since the purpose of these icons is so that they can be easily identified and understood.

Comparison of icon with stroke 6-pt tassle and stroke 10-pt tassle.

9.15 | Graphic Exploration

I’ve been a little stuck on the content in the packet. The information is very dense, and I’m having trouble breaking it down, and quickly losing interest. Instead of prolonging my standstill with the pre-application, I chose to explore some visual components of the work. Here, I traced a map of Pittsburgh and tried arranging it in different compositions. There’s still a long way to go (and I haven’t decided if I’ll actually be using these icons) but it’s a work in progress.

9.20 | Audience + Language

I decided to focus my audience on local Pittsburghers who are interested in using art to bring awareness to traffice safety.

9.22 | Layout / Typographic Exploration

9.23 | Learning about Grids

I spent a few hours just immersing myself in a grid system I love — MICA’s Commotion Magazine Issue No. 1 from Fall 2015, designed by Design Army (a design firm I’ve just discovered and already fallen in love with).

Studying this grid system helped me visually break down the content. I love the way typography was explored in this magazine. For this project — since I’m a novice at grids at this point — I want to borrow the grid layout that was used here, knowing that if I use it would work if I use it correctly.

About the Grid:

9.25 | Modifying the Icons

Feedback:

the yellow is too lemony, add a tinge of red
however! if the colour is chosen deliberately (100% CMYK) then think about purpose
the stripes are not coming off as crosswalks right now
icons need modification

After lots of modification this weekend, I finalized these 16 icons to incorporate into my visual system:

Reflection:

finding balance in contrast was difficult
difficulty deciding whether to

Discovery:

by inverting strokes / fills, the weight of the icons change, hence their visual presence also takes on a different form

9.26 | Setting Up My Grid

I’m a little bit behind on exploring my grid, but I’m the type of person to feel more comfortable diving into something after getting to know it for a bit. As for the grids, I feel a lot more familiar with them now that I’ve done some analysis over the weekend. I’ve decided to stick to something relatively simple for now.

A few things to keep in mind as I dive into setting up the grid:

L(ocation) A(alphabet) T(time) C(ategory) H(ierarchy)
what is the viewing direction?
what kinds of elements do I want to integrate and focus on? (photos, graphic elements, typography?)

Conclusions from today’s crit:

focus on indicator for interaction
draw out narrative
emphasize dominant flow line
keep treatment of text (styles) consistent for similar content
add entry into page
differentiate hierarchy levels
enhance legibility

Crit:

mixed feedback for the texture,

10.1 | Changes in Logistics

I decided to change the proportions of my booklet. I started off with the 9.5 x 12 in format, but began to realize that it may be difficult to use the size for this type of content. Instead, I scaled the booklet down to 8 x 10 in. It’s still a comfortable size to hold, and works well for playing with typography.

The grid seems to be working quite nicely too, with the proportion shown above. I still need to fit more content in though.