Symbol Design

Concept

Create symbols for three rooms in the graphic design studio which indicate the purpose and activity within each room. The three symbols must each be distinct but also feature similar design elements which stylistically connects them.

The three rooms we designed symbols for are the First Year Studio, the Mini Mac Lab, and the Graphic Design Lab. The symbols are designed to hang beside the entrance to each room. They will be rendered in pure white and black simplistic forms. Each symbol will be 3x3 inches square. The symbols will be understandable from a distance of 12-15 feet away.

Application

The members of the team made several sketches for each of the three rooms we set out to symbolize. This allowed each of us to independently brainstorm ideas before becoming influenced by anyone else’s vision. We then shared our sketches and selected the strongest designs. Each of us then recreated our best concepts digitally and refined them for a second critique. After receiving further input, we each selected one of our three designs to finalize.

For the MacLab, we chose to feature the image of a computer chair heavily. It was our belief that the primary visual related to this room should be a semiotic index depicting the idea of working on a computer. While not a pure index, this visual focus more on the secondary interactive object (the chair) rather than the primary object (the computer). In order to further indicate the idea of “graphic design” as opposed to “computer work”, an oversized cursor with a marquee bounding box appears onscreen. This serves as a visual indication that the computers in this room are intended for visual design and not word processing.

The First Year Studio is indicated with a collection of the tools used in that classroom. This design is an icon which directly represents specific items required for the many courses taught in the first year of Graphic Design. While these physical items are specifically needed for work in this classroom, they also represent some of the wide variety of digital tools found in design software.