YOU ARE HERE.SITE MARKER PROPOSALMEGAN COOPER & FLORENTINO DIAZ

STATEMENT OF DESIGN PROBLEMWe need to design a three dimensional site marker that represents the essence of the Kansas City Art Institute and defines the East entrance. Straying away from the original aesthetic of the school, we must use typographic elements, image, form, or a combination of all three to develop our design.

SITE ASSESSMENTThe trend with art schools’ campus-es in the last few decades has been to overuse minimalist environmental design to the point of sterility. The unique thing about the Kansas City Art Institute’s campus is that it does not fall into that category. The school maintains the style they have had for years, which makes the campus seem reputable while simultaneously mak-

ing it seem warm and welcoming. The school has a familiar feeling that invites potential students. This is the same feeling that we want to empha-size. The site-marker reads “You Are Here”, which makes the statement that the reader has finally reached their destination.

INSPIRATIONWe had two main sources of inspira-tion, formal inspiration (i.e. materials, aesthetics, etc.) and conceptual in-spiration. Conceptually, we began by examining the idea of a journey. We felt that when a student starts college, they are ending one journey, and beginning their next. We wanted the site marker to reflect and confirm that. We began to intregrate that idea into our site marker by thinking of symbols of confirmation, and from there we thought about symbols of destinations. Combining the two, we landed at “You Are Here”.

Formally, we were left with a lot of choices. We knew we wanted to ex-plore the shape of the Google Maps flag, and change it’s voice to fit the tune of the school. Beyond that, most of our formal inspiration had to do with material usage. Remembering that the appeal of the school is that it maintains it’s environmental design style, we plan to pay homage to the existing structure by using plexiglass. We looked into several plexiglass struc-tures, including the two to the left.

DESIGN SKETCHES

COLORS

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TOP VIEW

5 ft.

1 ft.

2.5 ft.

1.5 ft.

2.5 ft.

1 ft.

FRONT VIEW

EASTEAST8 ft.

1 ft.

5 ft.

SIDE VIEW

EASTEAST

GRAPHIC DESIGN DEPARTMENT / KANSAS CITY ART INSTITUTE / MICHAEL KIDWELL / 2012