Materials for Fruit and Vegetable Market signs

Research on sign materials

I did some research to find out what materials would be best to display my signs on.
Here is a website I found useful for this: http://www.fastsigns.com/sign-materials.html
After reading about each material, I decided that wood was the most suitable material for my signs.

Here is what I found out about the wood:

"Wood and composite materials
Wood and composite materials will give you years of outdoor service. They are suitable for large format signage, are weather resistant and have a rigid, flat surface. Wood products can be painted to match custom colors for signage use in commercial real estate, construction firms and property leasing companies. Some composite materials come in a wide range of colors. Others are only available in white.
There are occasions when wood or any one of several other composite materials is the appropriate substrate to use for your outdoor signage needs. There are a number of different materials that can fill these requirements. Medium Density Overlay Plywood (MDO), Alumalite®, Omega® board, DiBond® to name a few. All are durable and versatile, materials designed for a wide variety of outdoor uses including these types of signage:

• Site Signs
• Directional Signs
• Identification Signs

Signs made from wood can be displayed in several ways:

• Bolted to posts and planted in the ground
• Bolted to walls
• Hanging"

The wood material contains all the elements I need for my signs. It can be used outdoors, in all climates. It can be used on walls and could be hung. It is fairly cheap and is not too heavy. It is long lasting and can be painted on or can be used with stickers.

Colors for the Fruit and Vegetable Market

Above you can see the colors I have chosen from the market mood board for my icons.
I chose to have two sets of colors: the green signs are for direction, telling people where to go and where to find what they want. The blue are warning signs telling people what to do or what to watch out for. The green ones will be placed higher then the blue ones for they need to be seen from further away.
I tried to keep the colors simple, to keep the icons easy to read. The white background keeps them clear, creating a high contrast between the white and the color.

AbuHammour Sinage Color Scheme and Application

I simplified my color scheme by using only 2 colors ,and increased contrast by using black as the background.I chose to use a light box for the application because its attracts attention and relates to the lights of the stores.

Colors for the Fruit and Vegetable Market

To find the right colors for my icons I went back to my mood board and picked out some of the colors that stood out the most and some of the colors that I felt would give the feel of the market. Here are some of those colors:
I then tried applying these colors to my icons and felt that this combonation of colors works best:The two colors used above came from my mood board I felt they went well against one another, for they carry a good contrast that keeps the icon clear to read.
The sample icon, above, shows an attempt of how the icon can be placed with the text on the the sign.

Color Scheme For AbuHammour

Color scheme The color scheme I chose was derived From the mood poster we did ,Grey from asphalt...etc,with the emphasis on the signs to be seen it's brightness so it's seen Execution:my first thought was apply my system to standard reflective metal signs. But after the critique in class,I am now leaning towards having a light box signs instead ,where they resemble the signs that fill the station.

adding color

here is my initial color scheme that I've chosen









and this is the more improved chosen the bright neon colors to contrast with the dull pastel colors of my space and they are inspired by the shopping theme of my section

refining and finding the suitable typefaces

1. this is the collection of icons that I've tried to finalize yet they still had some issues with the system









2. while being critiqued by both the class instructor and having a discussion with another teacher outside the class about systems in icons I started understanding more and knowing what could make an icon not belong to the system there are several points or elements to think of
- the most obvious problem is whether my icons should be flat or dimensional choosing one of these and keeping it consist ant which is what was lacking in the images shown above the shopping cart and the shopping bag are dimensional while mostly the other icons are flat
- the quality of the icons' edges whether they should be pointed and sharp or having them all with a rounded edge which I was trying to achieve but wasn't completely solved yet in some of the icons
-the consistency of the thickness of my stroke depending on the style of my icon for example in my icons I have to keep it consistent and not vary from one icon to another but from critique and observation other students who have chosen Arabic calligraphy style to there icons their strokes vary from thicks and thins but still having it consistent in all their icons
- lastly is the percentage of black I have as a fill color in my icons so for example if one icon has 70% black then it should be as consistent in the other icons which was still lacking in the alarm tag icon and the shopping cart icon

by such notes I tried to improve my icons as shown in the following:









and for arabic type I've searched for the most suitable arabic type that had similar counter space, x-height, stroke weight, and the proper legibility as well as their syntactic formal relationship to the icons. I've struggled with finding a suitable Arabic type then I was recommended to look through the GE fonts for suitable Arabic typeface

in case you were wondering what are GE fonts they are called Graph East fonts which from their name are designed to suit arabic typeface but they are designed to mimic the feel of latin typefaces in their shape, line quality and so on so far they are not available in the vcuq system but they are available in a few forums that I've looked at mostly arabic forums

GraphEast
جراف ايست

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.