In the first half of our exploration, we focused on CSM’s wayfinding system’s access barriers for everyone on campus. By focusing on the system instead of a specific group, we tried to be as inclusive as possible and make the best possible version. We created colour palettes that would work for colour-blind people and looked for access barriers for people with low mobility.
The resulting analysis revealed several fundamental issues that could represent access barriers. While tackling them is valuable and needed, we overlooked many other obstacles that only people who have experienced them could point out.
In the final part of our work, we chose dyslexic people as our audience, which allowed for more focused research. We also reached out to dyslexic people, created a survey aimed at our audience, and interviewed one of the respondents. It was the first brief I engaged with my target audience. The fact that I am not dyslexic made it even more relevant.
Our problem-solving approach early on steered us into looking for one definitive solution. After the tutorial feedback, I realised that acknowledging my position and biases gives context to my work and situates it in a larger body of knowledge around design and disability justice.
One Publishes to Find Comrades*
The fact that there are numerous bespoke signs on campus shows that traditional signage is not a definitive solution to all wayfinding needs. Due to its rigidity, it fails to consider the changing needs of all users, who create their own signs on demand. These move away from the official signage category and closer to posters, with similar materials, visual language and production flexibility. The sign’s size, visuals and materials speak as much as the text in them.
Although serving a very different purpose than wayfinding, the silk-screened poster culture’s process inspires our proposed collaborative project. This alternative approach to wayfinding challenges its technical and expert-claimed position within design fields. With participants bringing in techniques and materials expertise from their own distinct practices, the goal of this project is not the utilitarian outcome that is a wayfinding system but the community building that comes from collective work.
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* This is the title of Weinmayr’s essay on the collection edited by Klimpel (2014). It is originally from André Breton in 1920, quoted by Gareth Branwyn “Jamming the Media: A Citizen’s Guide Reclaiming The Tools of Communication”. Vancouver: Chronicle Books, 1997.
Reference list
Klimpel, O. (ed.) (2014) The Visual Event, an education in appearances. Leipzig: Spector Books.
Critical Graphic Design: Critical of What?*
One way to analyse our process is to dissect it into three levels: personal, community and public.
Regarding personal aspects, we are students in a master’s course. Therefore, the academic brief and material conditions define our time and resources. These constraints directly impacted our choices, as did the university environment. Knowing our work would be evaluated by tutors, a guest practitioner, and the public once published shaped the space in which our investigation took place. We also know that our work should contribute to the broader design community and can influence future work on disability justice or similar topics. So far, we have produced fiction and speculation. Public interest is a crucial criterion that will guide the future of this work.
Our work happened within these three layers, but no clear boundary exists between them. The personal, community and public implications influenced one another. The collaborative project proposal came from a personal critical perspective of the current state of our investigation, but Beatrice Sangster’s provocation also influenced it. She argues that design for disability justice must include disabled people. Designers must “design with” instead of “design for” their audience, which shifts from a passive to an active role in the creative process.
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* This is the title of Laranjo’s (2014) article.
Reference list
Laranjo, F. (2014) Critical Graphic Design: Critical of What?. Available at: https://modesofcriticism.org/critical-graphic-design/ (Accessed: 27 Feb 2025).
Can Fonts Really Help Those with Dyslexia?*
Research is essential for any design practice, especially when dealing with complex issues like disability justice. As a non-dyslexic designer, reading Madeleine Morley’s article in the collection edited by Fuller and Stinson (2024, p. 138) helped me understand that dyslexia is not a visual disability, a common misconception.
It also allowed me to look more critically at guidelines about design for dyslexia. We used them as a starting point in our process, but with awareness that it didn’t its rules were not universal or definitive, but exist in a specific context in time and reflect the biases of those who created them.
The next step in our exploration was to interview and show our pieces to one person who answered the survey for dyslexic people on CSM. Having direct input from someone in our audience was essential, and this conversation deeply informed our work.
One person can not speak for an entire community; no audience is homogenous. As much as we try, the choices we make as designers will never work for everyone. That is because subjectivity is an integral part of design. This can be framed as a limitation or something to embrace.
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* This is the title of Madeleine Morley’s article on the book edited by Fuller and Stinson (2024).
Reference list
Fuller, J. and Stinson, L. (ed.) (2024) What it means to be a designer today: reflections, questions and ideas from AIGA’s Eye on design. 1st edn. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
Design Social Change*
The positionality wheel was my first interaction with the concept of position. It helped me realise that designers don’t have to limit themselves because of their race, gender, or abilities. Making a position statement on the individual level creates self-awareness, and on a larger group, it shows similarities and differences and exposes who is missing from the conversation. Analysing our own positions made us realise we needed to include dyslexic people in our process if we wanted our work to tackle their needs.
As we concluded our studio work, I questioned myself about the goal of this brief. Is redesigning a wayfinding system enough? What is the social impact of our production? Systems that facilitate spatial navigation are critical for users’ experiences, but so are many other factors.
There is a relevant difference between “designing for disability justice” and “designing disability justice”. Phrasing a practice in the lather way, like Ann-Noel’s book title, highlights the agency designers have when addressing social issues. Design shapes society, and the way we found to increase the impact of our work was, instead of redesigning the system, redesign the participants by making it a community-based project instead of a group work.
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* This is part of the title of Noel’s (2023) book.
Reference list
Noel, L. (2023) Design Social Change: Take Action, Work Toward Equity, and Challenge the Status Quo. 1st edn. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press.
Based on a Tree Story*
We found fundamental problems when analysing CSM’s wayfinding system, like empty spaces where text is supposed to go and uncomprehensible line breaks. We do not know how the details of development and production, but more attention to detail could have prevented these flaws.
A critical eye considers multiple angles and looks beyond its immediate subject. If we go beyond signage’s functional aspects, we can explore other ways to experience space. Incorporating storytelling in a signage system will likely improve audience engagement with a physical space and the designer’s engagement with the project. Even if not evident in the final product, extra layers of experimentation positively impact the creative process. Looking at traditional signage from unorthodox angles might render novel solutions.
Finsbury Park’s most strikingly different aspect is the free access compared to the barriers we found on CSM. The most physically noticeable aspect wasn’t the openness to experimentation of an art school but the access limitations.
Can an art school benefit from incorporating elements from a radically different environment, such as a park? Is there a relationship between its openness and a college-wide collaboration?
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* This is the name of the project by Studio Hyte (2022).
Reference list
Studio Hyte (2022) Based on a Tree Story. Available at: https://studiohyte.com/projects/based-on-a-tree-story (Accessed: 27 Feb 2025).
Alt Text as Poetry*
Alt text and wayfinding share many similarities. They are utilitarian, as users engage with them to complete a task, and both are tools that enable access to places, content, or knowledge. They also share similar problems, like imprecision and absence. Alt text is vague or missing from many images online in the same way that wayfinding systems can often provide incomplete directions, as our research shows.
Because language is essential in their operation, both tools can benefit from the methods used by poets. Attention to detail and word economy were integral parts of our redesign process, resulting in concise signs that prioritise information relevant to most users with a user-centred visual hierarchy.
Factoring in the needs of different user groups can be perceived as extra work. However, it should be part of the work and can make it more valuable and beautiful. Our project proposes to bring dyslexic people together and create helpful and meaningful work.
Signs designed collectively by dyslexic people would be easier for them to read and a symbol of inclusion to inspire future UAL projects to increase accessibility.
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* This is the name of the ongoing project by Coklyat and Shannon (2024).
Reference list
Coklyat, B., Shannon, F. (2024) Alt Text as Poetry. Available at: https://alt-text-as-poetry.net/ (Accessed: 27 Feb 2025).