Beginning design prototypes

This week I looked at playing around with different material and creating some basic design ideas. The purpose was to get a better understanding of what the project might look like, find any faults in the design and look for an possible developments that could be made. 

I first looked at the map. After looking at some ideas for the map. Having the map on a free standing map as the plan at this stage is to have it in the court yard. 

What seemed to look best was having the countries in different colour and slightly raised. I created a small scale model at first.

One issue noticed was a problem relating to having it stand alone(as apposed to hanging on a wall), which was getting it to stand upright. We need to figure out a way to anchor it to the ground. This then raises a problem in terms of its portability, will it be able to be placed anywhere. The next step with the design of the map is to look create larger prototype and test this on potential users. We must also look at what lighting might be most suitable as this could effect the design. 


I then looked at the text installation. Here I used card to create a small prototype (only three letters). I wanted to see what it looked like to eliminate certain letters. I also wanted to look at what size the letters should be.
The letters are about 10 inches in height. I used the Caslon font. Having asked a couple of people's opinions they agreed that this size was suitable. 

The other issue to address was lighting one letter at a time. This was a simple matter if having a divider between each letter to avoid the light spilling over. Problems that arose from creating this prototype was the light itself. It needs to be more dispersed. I looked at covering the letter in lightweight paper, which made the light disperse evenly, however this would cover up the letters, defeating the purpose of having multiple letters hiding the sentence. A possible solution would be to have the lightweight paper inside the letters, as in just in front of the light, this would ensure the light was dispersed and hid any technology visible.  

 
What we need to look at next is creating a prototype with more letters and see is this too cluttered and still legible. We also need to look at how brightness of the room effects the light level.