finding my system

since I tried a variety of sketches and tried to diverge in my first problem through class two important elements seemed to be the most functional and related to my place which is villagio
-one being or having clean quality in line drawing
- two having to exaggerate and highlight elements in my icon, but why exaggerate? a question that was raised. villagio interior is very well exaggerate in some areas and try to show an over the top theme whether it was in it's fake interiors + exteriors or in it's rules and it being very orderly and clean

so based on these two main elements in the system for the icons I tried explore with the following problems:

here are problems that are taken from the book:













the first row is dealing with the problem of people standing in the middle of the way.
second row is leaving carts outside the shop.
third row is dealing with bumping bags.

I've then sketched a few of the generic problems:

sketching

during this phase we started creating a list of words for each problem before drawing the icon
for example my first problem was retail alarm censers making people be aware of it so I've started looking for the possible indexes and objects that could represent it so there were a few
a. the alarm tag
b. the alarm censer
c. the alarm tag with a hand
d. the alarm tag with a t-shirt
then I collected a few photographs of possible angles that could work and start tracing, exploring, understanding what angle could work best which has more potential and then simplifying further more and refining

sketches of problem 1. alarm sensers:

Refining

this is what i have after the last critique. i have tried my best to establish a system by having a zoom up of the problems and also balancing it with the black and white spaces. i have somplified qute a few of them and erased excessive details. However the type is still not revised and i have to still look for more expressive type.

experimenting

so the next thing i did was trying icons and refining it in order to get the communication cross.
since the band aids did not work so well, so i took a start from showing how the garage bag, the blade cuming out of it and pricking a hand. But after the critique i realized this was not following my system.
the glue on the floor. i tried to show more zoomed up of it by showing more of the sole, trying to follow the system of showing a very close up of the cutting marks on the table. after the critique i realized that the shoe showed a lot of details in comparison to th rest of my icons and so it needs simplification.
now instead of my toilets i now tried to show the icon of showing electric danger, hence i showed bare open wires. in this the diagonal of the wire follows the system of the same way my cutting marks has a diagonal of the table.
Now instead of showing the printer i now concentrated towards just showing papers scattered around, however according to the critique this looked more like an organized pile of papers
And lastly since my water tap and droplets were all solid color, i tried to experiment more with the lines. however according to the critique this no longer showed a tap and instead looked like an open shower.

Developing a system

since my previous attempts were not applicable to the mood and place, ie VCU. I now tried by having just indexes of my problems, so that it is more in reponse to my audience whichare basically designers. Yet my challenge was to communicate these indexes well which wouold answer the problems
for example :
the spraying glue on floor. instead of actually showing the spray can used on floor, i tried by showing only the shoe stuck on to the glue on floor.
the throwing of trash on floor. instead of having a hand dropping trash i now just thought of having crushed paper fallen on the floor.
the the cutting on table. instead of showing the exacto knife and hand i simply traced the marks on the table.
disposing of the exacto blades. since i felt tha a cut is an index of this, i showed blood and bandaid. yet not convinced if this communicates well.
wasting printing paper. i showed papers just cuming out of the printer. yet here i felt i wasnt just following my system which was not to show the object that is the printer.
the spraying in classrooms. here i showed the spray all in the air.
the extra ones: i thought of closing the taps properly. here i just showed water droplets from the tap.
and then i thought of doing the toilets. putting just straight geometrical figures so tha not a lot of detail shows and it is in correspondence with the other icons. but still doubtful about it

set of 8 spices

I keep in mind the unity of the icon. But I create the forms I had aproblem with the thickness . some of the looks different because of the scale. I have to groups of spices. One for countable spices and the other for uncountable spices. For example lemon is countable so I draw one lemon..etc.

In the class critique. I was suggested to have all of the spices in a group. So that I don't loose the unity of them. The critique was helpful and aware me of something that I wasn't consider at.

I chose arabic font that has thick and then parts and at the same time it's has basic handwriting feeling. The latin one also has the same texture.

developing the actual Icons

I take a sample of each kind of the original form of the spices. then I explored the surface and the size of each one of them. I draw sketches of each one in different angels. I started with a very detailed one tell the I reached the simple abstract form. For some spices I cannot get rid of the detailed because the actual form is not easy to recognize. So i have to figure out which details I have to include or take of.






I keep in mind the effect of the arabic calligraphy pen ( thick & thin part) plus the texture of the in ink on the rough surface.

exploring with different materials and techniques

I used the sponge roll and dip it in the ink to have a feeling of smudgy textures. each time i try it in a different way . I played with the negative area. it's make a big different when I cover a part or fill it with ink.

writing on the wood and fabric gives fuzzy edges result.

searching for techniques that being used there

The Souq is very old and it's made of rocks and mud. I looked at the calligraphy and the graphs. I found that they used very typical hand writing. Even the images is very basic.




I did some experiment on the rocks and other material.
The writing they used is very rough textured ans not professional. So you can see rough edges around the letters due to the material they use to write in .






This is arabic calligraphy pen. This type of pen is very common for classic arabic writing.

Phase 3 Process

I decided to do Icons for the spices, because there are no labels or title to describe them. Due of lake communication. It was hard to ask the sellers about the spices, so visual communication is one of our mission as a designer.


Other issue is that most spices is grounded -roasted- So it's not in it's original shape. To come up with an Icons for them. I have to search for the original raw shape of those spices.

Sumac

Can you imagine!! It's kind of fruits
this was surprise for me, because I didn't thought that a spice can be a fruit.

Abu Hamour

After my 1-1 critique ,I had a lot of good advice how to better improve my signage's system and quality.I also found a better typeface that ave better texture.