Signboard Redesign

 

There is a big problem in being in designer; you can’t roam around freely avoiding things as one in the image below.

It’s a signboard hanging on this wall from a long time and it regularly directs me & everyone who enters my university campus.

So, how is it?
Good type selection, good contrast, nice & costly vinyl print, what else someone wants from a signboard !

But does it perform the task it is assigned for?

Providing me directions…I think no!

Let’s figure out why & what’s the solution for it?

First of all, the designer of this signboard has beautifully shattered the directional property of an arrow shape by putting it in a box/square, treating it as negative space is an extra add-on to it.

Back to Basics.

So, when the purpose is indicate a direction, putting an arrow in a sqaure is a big NO.

Second thing, when placed vertically in a row, squares forms a group and creates an unwanted vertical relationship, so now the first thing we will do is to remove the squares and put the arrows on right places.

That’s better, but there is still some visual relationship between elements vertically. To alter that, we will introduce a horizontal line between two entities; this will create groupings in text & arrow horizontally and make it communicate better.

See how much difference a line makes.

Now the final thing: Visibility
Is that arrow shape is the perfect selection for this job, or it can be better. I think the size and thickness of the directional part and tail in this arrow is not appropriate, that will create trouble while viewing from a distance and sometimes ( for e.g. while watching it from prespective) it might not be reconizable easily.

Lets tryout the new arrow in our design.

The new arrow sure works better than previous one and does a better (visual) communication.

So, making better designs is not that tough…right !
We just need to know what to add, what to remove & when to stop.

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