“You cannot not communicate.”

– Paul Watzlawick

Signs are an often overlooked art, in every way. We often do not even notice half of them, unless we are specifically looking for them. And they are truly everywhere. In this project, we were to design a sign or object that would affect the behaviour of people walking around our building DJCAD. The object had to be completely removable, could not be a nuisance and had to leave a lasting impression on the people who interacted with it.

We started out with a talk on behaviour and the effects of fonts. Where after we went around the building to do our own observations on behaviour.

Observations

We found that people in the building always seem to know where they are going, and barely give walls and the ground a second look.

We also found that people walking alone, unsurprisingly, are more likely to take up their phone when they see others, or they just walk with it in general. Not always using, but just holding it in their hands.

People walking together, on the other hand, where after talking and walking close to each other, but they seemed to be even less likely to pay attention to things around them. Because their attention was focused on the other person. Whereas people walking alone, are looking for any distraction if they do not have their phone in their hand.

We also found that people were more likely to walk through the big doors in the hall, and rarely did anyone uses the small door on the far right.

Brainstorm

Doing our initial brainstorm we came up with lots of different ideas;

Lines on the floor, to make people change their normal route unconsciously, a button to challenge people’s curiosity, signs to confuse them on which floor they were on, writhing meaningful quotes on the stairs, putting it on the ceilings over the stairs, and so on. Unfortunately, not all these ideas were put on paper, but these are the ones that made it.

Location

After brainstorming for a while, we chose to split up our group, into pairs of two. Marianna and I chose to work with the quote on the stairs. We wanted to make people enjoy walking around more, and we wanted to make them aware of the “fear” that walking without our phones gives most of us. We feel naked and uncomfortable without it.

And for that purpose we choose the last stairs walking from 5th floor to 4th. Because it leads to both the library, the Crawford building, to the restrooms and to the lifts. And yes, the lifts are important too. Cause this was one of the places we saw lots of people clinging to their phones. Especially in the morning.

Quotes

After figuring out what we wanted to achieve, we started brainstorming on which quotes we wanted to use.

We found and came up with quite a few;

2nd Brainstorm

We choose to use the slogan

“Don’t be afraid

To walk

Without your

Phone”

Because it is short, it communicates our point, and it has three meanings. Which would be fun and challenging to try to communicate.

Now that we knew what we wanted to write we could begin our second research on fonts, colour schemes and graphics to communicate our point the most effective.

Choosing type

Picture of final photoshop prototype

We choose to go with the yellow to orange colour scheme, but with a black text, to make it more refined. When it comes to types we choose Centaur on the first line “Don’t be afraid” because it is comforting in its round curves, but the serifs and the square dots create interest and generates attention. Also the “Don’t” was put in italic and bold, the italic to emphasise the meaning, and the bold to visually even it out with the PHONE at the end of the sign.

For the second line “to WALK” we used Modern No. 20, for the “to” and Copperplate Gothic light for “walk”. We chose to use two fonts so that they “walk” would pop out more.

Modern No. 20 has character, but without drawing too much attention to itself, whereas Copperplate is a gothic font, that has a lot of weight and character to it. It is also very old and signals how fundamental the statement is.

“Without your” is written in Goudy Old Style, it is a relatively neutral font, easy to read and easy on the eye. We choose those characteristics because this bit of the text is not the most important, however, it is important for the meaning, and therefore has to be easy and fast to read.

“Phone” however, is written in Bodoni MT Condensed. We chose a condensed font to create some interest in the last bit of the text since this will be what will be seen first when you walk towards it looking at your phone. This is also the reason why we chose such a heavy font.

Caps

We used caps in a few different ways in our design. In the first line, it is only the first letter that is in caps to keep it comfortable and easy to read. In the second line, we had “to” in low caps and “walk” in all caps, to show what to focus on, and to give the sign more visual impact. “without your” is all in low caps to visualise that it is not the important bit. “Phone” on the other hand, is in all caps because it is the point of the sign.

As said the sign has 3 meanings, and all three are emphasised by caps.

Designing the steps

There are 11 steps on the staircase we wanted to use. The phrase was only 4 lines, but since the stairs are only 13.5 cm high we wanted each letter to spread over two stairs. And so we had 3 stairs left for blanks. We chose to put one on the top stair to visually give the letters some room, and two on the bottom stairs, so that there was more blank space to draw attention while turning around the corner. But also because of the angle the sign is read from, the bottom letters need “more space” because they are closer to the viewer.

Building process

To begin with, we wanted to get the type printed, at the at the print unit, but because of the size of the document, 183.5 x 148.5 cm, it would be quite expensive and would take multiple prints.

So instead of print, we decided to use cardboard. Jason helped us cut out the cardboard in the size of the stairs, 13.5 x 183.5 cm.

We then started spray painting them in our yellow and orange colours. However, the yellow spray paint kept spitting and we were unable to do the gradient effect as we wanted it. Instead, we got a rougher look with spits of paint and unperfect coating, that gave the sign some texture, that it otherwise would have lacked. So, in the end, it was quite lucky really.

For the lettering, we used black markers, one to line them, and one to fill them in. And since we wanted the fonts to be as correct as possible, without printing them, we put up the projector in first a lecture hall, and later on in a small room.

Here we drew the letters on in the sizes we wanted them. I had earlier on figured out which size the letters should be so that when you looked at the stairs from the 4th floor it would fit together over the stairs. I did this by creating a photoshop document where I put the text on I the perspective we wanted, and then I enlarged the letters into the same size.

Pictures of letters on the staircase, and then next to each other like when we painted them

Final observations

On Tuesday the 20th we put our cardboard strips on the stairs with masking tape and observed as people walked by if they noticed the sign if they were walking with their phone, and if they put it away.

Unfortunately, we only observed over a short period of time and didn’t get too many readings.

Fortunately, we were able to see a pattern anyway. Most people who walked by did see our sign, a lot actually stopped while walking to give it a closer look, and one group stood and discussed it for a while. So it defiantly had visual impact enough to be noticed, but not many walked with their phones while we stood there, however, two people out of five put down their phones after seeing the sign.

For myself, when I see signs or objects like this one, I do not change my own behaviour at once either. But it will often make me think about it throughout the day, and I will try and change my behaviour. So if we were able to, it would have been useful to follow the people who saw it, to see if they walk less with their phone throughout the following hours. Or we could have stopped some people and asked them. But let that be a reflection for next time.