Integrating site-specific environmental graphic design within an urban context

Abstract

There are opportunities for environmental graphic design solutions that can enable urban residents to grasp information faster, reach destinations sooner and foster memorable experiences. In the daily negotiation of city living there may also be opportunities for educating residents about meaningful community-related topics. Graphic design can play a key role in addressing these goals. Environmental graphic design and wayfinding can help make urban experiences easier and more interesting. Incorporating the strategies of layering and sequencing within environmental graphic design solutions can strengthen the overall design and the particular messages being conveyed.

One socially important topic city residents need to be made more aware of is the significance and challenges of homeless animals living within the urban environment. Services such as animal shelters and animal rescue groups are non-profit organizations that continue to face challenges in supporting needy animals despite government assistance. Public participation in solving these issues could help these organizations grow and function more smoothly. Through effective design planning and the use of environmental graphic design solutions, designers could experiment with message-making strategies that visually communicate more effectively to the public and yield more tangible positive results.

This exploration investigates the roles of physical and informational layering, sequencing and visual hierarchy, and how these design strategies can help convey sensitive social messages effectively. This thesis also studies how specific urban spaces can contribute to environmental graphic design projects. It joins a larger continuum of design work that focuses on how space and certain physical contexts can be used strategically to host social messages and seeks to make those messages memorable through successful visual and verbal problem solving.