“".. design must be seen as a cultural forming and shaping process

because design is much more than creating a simple product.”

DEVELOPMENT /

After familiarizing ourselves with the story
behind Helen’s sign and the rich history of
the community surrounding this heritage
landmark, we knew that emphasizing this
community history was going to be our
design’s core. As Jodi Forlizzi and Cherie
Lebbon affirm, “at the heart of design is the
goal of communication, and installing a belief
in the audience about the past, present or
future.” As Forlizzi and Lebbon recommend,
we also strived to create empathy with our
target audience. Since our goal was to mitigate
the absence of visual and cultural knowledge of
neon signs, we decided to find a way to use our
designs to form and shape a new neon culture.
To paraphrase M.P. Ranjan in his work Hand-
Head-Heart: Ethics in Design, design must be
seen as a cultural forming and shaping process
because design is much more than creating a
simple product. To frame our core narrative of

the Helen’s/Heights sign, we created a shell

that would hypothetically house all of the
unique narratives of the neon signs. (imace 2)
We wanted the front page to be unbiased
towards any particular neon sign; the design,
therefore, had to generally represent the time
period of the 1950s and 19Gos. Through many
sketch iterations, we struck an idea we all
agreed upon. Each square shows a different
neon sign in black and white, creating a neutral
background while showcasing the variety of
the signage. For the final design, we chose
five bold colours to illustrate the vitality and
playfulness of neon. The second component
of our project consisted of the narratives of
the neon sign and the Heights community.
Because the sign was created in the 19Gos,

we drew our graphic inspiration from images
and illustrations from that era. For the final
design, we chose to keep the interface mostly
graphic orientated so as to avoid cluttering up
the small space of a phone screen. This part of

IMAGE 2/ Ashell application (first two from left) houses all of Vancouver’s neon signs and acts

as a portal to applications developed specifically for each sign, such us the Heights (right).