Further Development, Artist Research and Responses

Development into enlightenment  (top middle) work and seeing how it would look in scale on a mock up, it hints at the relation to graffiti and offers and sense of direction, which would be successful for the wayfinding system. The design shares similarities to Kate Moross’ work for the h2go Bottle Design for New Zealand in 2013. The design itself proved successful through positive feedback from other classmates

Choosing Grafitti as the pivotal aspect proved difficult when researching, as graffiti is a very subjective process, there are no design principles or rules to follow. So to gain idea's and look at ways in which I could approach the task differently, I decided to research into artists.

DAIN, a New York based artist creates street art using many layers, that being collage print outs, wheat paste and spray paint, the overall look is exciting and intriguing. The idea of possibly creating works of art entwined with the theme of graffiti could act like a graffiti tag, and be situated around Leeds to lead to the graffiti sites. Incorporating the design with arrows could help distinguish direction. DAIN tend to incorporate themes of films and famous people, to further develop ideas, I could incorporate Leeds into the piece, by collage parts of the cities architecture, or famous people who originated from Leed.

In response to DAIN work, I decided to experiment with the process of his work and create my of form of supergraphic. The overall look is eye catching and with the use of arrow shows a clear form of direction. This design however could be lost within all the other graffiti designs around, this design approach won’t be accepted by all the public and come across as illegal graffiti itself, which would lead to people illegally vandalising the walls and the design itself, loosing it’s meaning and purpose as a wayfinding system which promotes the legal places to go for graffiti. A contextual example of that being the 2013 Leeds mural, situated near the Munro House on Duke Street, Leeds, where parts of the commissioned graffiti art has been vandalized multiple times. 

Boris Tellegen the artist behind DeltaInc, who was born in Amsterdam, originally wanted to be a graffiti artist. Through graffiti he explored the idea of creating 3D graffiti and push the depth of his work. With a contextual link to graffiti and his geometric layering approach to his design work, incorporating the same design may create a visually pleasing supergraphic wayfinding system for Leeds, linking to its context of existence and also becoming something interesting for the rest of the public to see.

An experimentation of supergraphic design inspired by Tellegen’s (DeltaInc) work and his use of collaging proved successful. The collage piece created incorporated the map of Leeds and where the graffiti walls are situated. This idea was developed as work by Tellegen with his ‘Exothermic’ installation proved inspiring, especially by the ways in which he created his layers through mixed material. Being inspired from Tellegen’s design the wayfinding system is subjective, relating to subjectivity of Graffiti, and the ideologies of Dutch designer Jan Van Toorn. In comparison to the DAIN development idea (middle) , this idea incorporates both a wayfinding system to the graffiti walls and a supergraphic that holds meaning and context about Leeds, making it a more acceptable piece compared to the DAIN design.