My project brief was to understand signage as an essential and integrated design element in the total environmental planning, understand Suzlon as a global brand, with sustainability as its core value, and evolve a signage system.
The project was interesting not only because it was about signage design, but also because it was for a company working towards green energy. Since I had not explored signage design in any of my previous projects, I wanted to take it up for my diploma project. I was completely new to factors such as material, size, scale and lighting and this project gave me an opportunity to explore them. Secondly, being a real life project it helped me understand the way signage design projects are handled keeping the user and space in mind.
Two design concepts were evolved as design solutions. The design concepts were based on the themes “wind” and “nature”. The first concept was based on the metaphor of dandelions, as they have wind borne seeds, called “florets”. The form of the dandelion was explored to create a sign family for the internal and external signage systems. In the second concept, a wind turbine was used for creating a sign family. The emphasis here was on material innovation and simplicity.
Working on a live project has taught me to be flexible and spontaneous in the design approaches that need to be taken keeping in mind time and resource constraints. Doing the project for a company working towards an eco-friendly source of energy has been a great value addition to my learning. It has not only affected my design decisions through the project but also changed my approach towards environment sensitive design.
