Letterforms surround us: inscriptions or names on buildings, directional signs for road networks, and signs within and around buildings. This book focuses on the letterforms and typography found in public places that help us to navigate towns, cities, and countrysides and that contribute to a sense of place. Featuring 700 color images of examples from around the world, it discusses the function and execution of signage. Part resource, part celebration, it brings together material that is of key interest to graphic designers, lettering artists, architects, and all those who are concerned with how towns and cities look and function.
Providing an essential grounding for both students and professionals, this text takes readers through every aspect of typography, from the history of language and writing systems to the invention of moveable type and the evolution of the digital systems of today.
Graphic Design in Urban Environments introduces the idea of a category of designed graphic objects that significantly contribute to the functioning of urban systems. These elements, smaller than buildings, are generally understood by urban designers to comprise such phenomena as sculpture, clock towers, banners, signs, large screens, the portrayal of images on buildings through “smart screens,” and other examples of what urban designers call “urban objects.”The graphic object as it is defined here also refers to a range of familiar things invariably named in the literature as maps, street numbers, route signs, bus placards, signs, architectural communication, commercial vernacular, outdoor publicity, lettering, banners, screens, traffic and direction signs and street furniture. One can also add markings of a sports pitch, lighting, bollards, even red carpets or well dressings. By looking at the environment, and design and deconstructing form and context relationships, the defining properties and configurational patterns that make up graphic objects are shown in this book to link the smallest graphic detail (e.g. the number 16) to larger symbolic statements (e.g. the Empire State Building). From a professional design practice perspective, a cross section through type, typographic, graphic and urban design will provide a framework for considering the design transition between alphabets, writing systems, images (in the broadest sense) and environments.
How do people react to the visual character of their surroundings? What can planners do to improve the aesthetic quality of these surroundings? Too often in environmental design, visual quality--aesthetics--is misunderstood as only a minor concern, dependent on volatile taste and thus undefinable. Yet a substantial body of research indicates the importance of visual quality in the environment to the public and has uncovered systematic patterns of human response to visual attributes of the built environment. Efforts to understand environmental aesthetics have been undertaken by investigators from such diverse fields as landscape architecture, environmental psychology, geography, philosophy, architecture, and city planning. As a result the relevant information is scattered and not readily available to professionals and policy makers. The book brings together classic and new contributions by distinguished workers in different disciplines. It explores theory and data on preferences in the visual environment, and also addresses the practical application of aesthetic criteria in design, planning and public policy. Promising directions for future research are identified.
"Fella's extraordinary photographs, taken as records of vernacular lettering and composition, are combined and juxtaposed with the finest examples of his unique hand lettering"--Book jacket.
How does a room affect an occupant's behavior and well-being? How does a building influence its residents' health? Environmental Psychology for Design, 3rd Edition, explores these questions with an in-depth look at psychosocial responses to the built environment. Awarded the 2006 ASID Joel Polsky Prize, the first edition served as an introduction to the discipline of environmental psychology and inspired readers to embrace its key concepts and incorporate them into their practice. This 3rd edition continues to analyze the interaction between environments and human behavior and well-being, while exploring how individual differences related to age, gender, and cultural background impact that interaction. Environmental Psychology for Design STUDIO -Study smarter with self-quizzes featuring scored results and personalized study tips -Review concepts with flashcards of terms and definitions PLEASE NOTE: Purchasing or renting this ISBN does not include access to the STUDIO resources that accompany this text. To receive free access to the STUDIO content with new copies of this book, please refer to the book + STUDIO access card bundle ISBN 9781501321801.
Currently people deal with various entities (such as hardware, software, buildings, spaces, communities and other people), to meet specific goals while going about their everyday activities in work and leisure environments. These entities have become more and more complex and incorporate functions that hitherto had never been allocated such as automation, use in virtual environments, connectivity, personalization, mobility and friendliness. This book contributes to the analysis of human-system interactions from the perspective of ergonomics, regardless of how simple or complex they are, while incorporating the needs of users and workers in a healthy safe, efficient and enjoyable manner. This book provides a comprehensive review of the state of the art of current ergonomic in design methods and techniques that are being applied to products, machinery, equipment, workstations and systems while taking new technologies and their applications into consideration. Ergonomics in Design: Methods and Techniques is organized into four sections and 30 chapters covering topics such as conceptual aspects of ergonomics in design, the knowledge of human characteristics applied to design, and the methodological aspects of design. Examples are shown in several areas of design including, but not limited to, consumer products, games, transport, education, architecture, fashion, sustainability, biomechanics, intelligent systems, virtual reality, and neurodesign. This book will: Introduces the newest developments in social-cultural approaches Shows different ergonomics in design methodological approaches Divulges the ways that ergonomics can contribute to a successful design Applies different subjects to support the design including –ergonomics, engineering, architecture, urbanism, neuro, and product designs. Presents recent technologies in ergonomic design, as applied to product design. With the contributions from a team of 75 researchers from 11 countries, the book covers the state-of-the-art of ergonomics in a way to produce better design.
In recent years, there has been considerable interest in the problems that public spaces face because of the design of commercial signs. The negative consequences that commercial signs can have on the visual quality of urban areas and further more, on people's quality of life, has been studied from both architectural, planning and psychological perspectives. While the issue of visual pollution, as this phenomenon is commonly described, has been widely debated, there is as yet no clear conclusion as to how best to control commercial signage and whether different urban contexts and people from different backgrounds and cultures have universal or distinct preferences. Several different commenrcial signage approaches are currently applied to different historic cities, but these initiatives are not based on principles derived from the perception and evaluation of users. Drawing on a range of comparative and contrasting empirical studies of historic city centres in the UK and Brazil, this book examines questions of commercial signage control management, the preservation of historic heritage and user preference and satisfaction. The author takes an environment behaviour approach to this research, involving theories, concepts and methodologies related to environmental psychology, architecture, planning and urban design. In doing so, it argues that there are in fact visual preferences common to the majority of people, independent of their urban context and that these common views can be useful to the development of a general theory of how to control commercial signage. In conclusion, the book suggests that the best way of controlling signage is not only to recommend general guidelines related to the operation of commercial signage, but also to recommend design principles that can create commercial streetscapes evaluated positively by different users.
