Type Trails: Exploring the potential of typography as a system for storytelling in urban wayfinding design

Jones, Sarah Jane

Type Trails: Exploring the potential of typography as a system for storytelling in urban wayfinding design

Jones, Sarah Jane

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Publication Type:: Thesis
Issue Date:: 2021

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Jones, Sarah Jane
dc.date.accessioned	2022-10-10T04:20:36Z
dc.date.available	2022-10-10T04:20:36Z
dc.date.issued	2021
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/162433
dc.description	University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building.	en_US.UTF-8
dc.description.abstract	This research proposes that a storytelling approach to urban wayfinding design opens up an opportunity to critically examine existing wayfinding design systems based on ecological, cultural and historical information and inform the wayfinding experience in a city. Urban wayfinding design plays an integral role in making cities legible, connected, accessible and functional. Navigational technologies and digital wayfinding have produced new methods to navigate and experience cities that impact new wayfinding systems design. Digital technologies extend opportunities for immersive and experiential approaches to narrative strategies of wayfinding design. This research poses the questions: 1. how might a storytelling approach to urban wayfinding design be a critical probe? 2. how might we design local wayfinding systems for cities that provide a deeper and richer orientation to place? The research initiates a critical enquiry into existing wayfinding design mechanisms within the city centre of Sydney. It classifies the global, local and historical influences on Sydney’s wayfinding systems and catalogues areas where a “local” identity could be developed from typographic and other perspectives. Identifying the disjunct between articulating the ecological history of the area and contemporary digital wayfinding and physical signage led to the development of a prototype titled Type Trails, which forms the practice component of this PhD. Type Trails is a locative, immersive, digital, wayfinding experience that prompts users to consider the ecological and cultural history of inner-city Sydney and its influence on how we find our way. As a discursive object, it contributes to the possibilities of geospatial explorations using typography as a system for storytelling within digital mapping and it works in a non-linear format with different literary sources that converge, wayfind and drift through multiple layered stories that connect with physical signage in place.	en_US.UTF-8
dc.format	Thesis (PhD)
dc.language.iso	en_US	en_US.UTF-8
dc.relation	https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/bitstream/10453/162433/2/02whole.pdf
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.rights	au.edu.uts.lib/ppc
dc.rights	The author owns the copyright in this thesis including all reproduction and reuse rights for the work. The work may not be altered without the permission of the copyright owner. Attribution is essential when quoting or paraphrasing from this thesis.
dc.title	Type Trails: Exploring the potential of typography as a system for storytelling in urban wayfinding design	en_US.UTF-8
dc.type	Thesis
utslib.copyright.status	open_access	*

Abstract:

This research proposes that a storytelling approach to urban wayfinding design opens up an opportunity to critically examine existing wayfinding design systems based on ecological, cultural and historical information and inform the wayfinding experience in a city. Urban wayfinding design plays an integral role in making cities legible, connected, accessible and functional. Navigational technologies and digital wayfinding have produced new methods to navigate and experience cities that impact new wayfinding systems design. Digital technologies extend opportunities for immersive and experiential approaches to narrative strategies of wayfinding design. This research poses the questions: 1. how might a storytelling approach to urban wayfinding design be a critical probe? 2. how might we design local wayfinding systems for cities that provide a deeper and richer orientation to place? The research initiates a critical enquiry into existing wayfinding design mechanisms within the city centre of Sydney. It classifies the global, local and historical influences on Sydney’s wayfinding systems and catalogues areas where a “local” identity could be developed from typographic and other perspectives. Identifying the disjunct between articulating the ecological history of the area and contemporary digital wayfinding and physical signage led to the development of a prototype titled Type Trails, which forms the practice component of this PhD. Type Trails is a locative, immersive, digital, wayfinding experience that prompts users to consider the ecological and cultural history of inner-city Sydney and its influence on how we find our way. As a discursive object, it contributes to the possibilities of geospatial explorations using typography as a system for storytelling within digital mapping and it works in a non-linear format with different literary sources that converge, wayfind and drift through multiple layered stories that connect with physical signage in place.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/162433