Time of the signs

Welcome to Emily and Sarah from the Typography and Graphic Communication department.  These two second year students have the challenge of producing interpretative signage that will be effective in communication, look good and cope with warmth and humidity.  They also need to complete the work by the end of June! The project has been offered via the typography real jobs programme which helps their students develop the skills needed to interact with customers who are not typographers or designers and who need help in converting ideas into design that can be realised.

Emily and Sarah visit the tropical greenhouse to check the layout of the planting areas, to discuss labelling ideas with Alastair Culham and to get a better idea of the project aims and possibilities.

The current labels in the glasshouse are mostly white plastic in either a ‘T’ shape or long straight sided with a roudned end.  All look a bit faded.  We discussed other possibilities such as aluminium labels that are fairly cheap and very durable but something more sophisticated is needed for the larger signs with general interpretation.  We also discussed the idea of using QR codes to link to custom blog pages containing species information – we do, after all, have wireless internet in the greenhouse as part of the project design!  As far as I know we are the first educational institution in the UK, and possibly the world, to provide wireless internet in glasshouses to give access to enhanced teaching resources.

The QR code for the Time of the Signs blog entry

The square above is the QR code for this blog entry and similar codes can be used to point to other pages as needed.  We plan to develop a suite of information pages for species and for species interactions in the coming academic year and to add to the labels in the greenhouse bit by bit as the project continues.