My eyes have been drawn to the Kosmograd blog by Martin Gittins, Creative Director of Interface New Media. In particular, some bits on (re-)branding
He wrote an interesting post back in October last year about his visit to the ‘Shaping the
‘Is the city becoming more fragmented? Or is there a framework emerging for a more coherent whole, within which each of the boroughs has a chance to establish a unique character?’
He follows this line of thought up more recently with a post relating to Felix Barber and Ralph Hyde's book ‘London as it might have been’. He follows through their picking up of John Leighton's plan to divide
‘With a clear demarcation between boroughs, it becomes much easier to define transition from one border to another… Now the jumble of logos and graphical devices can be replaced with a consistent, uniform identity system… Within each borough, each individual hex can also be given it's own identity, further reinforcing the idea of
I’ve previously mentioned the work of Legible London and their work on a new pedestrian way-finding system to help people walk around the Capital. Gittins’ sort of graphic design initiative links in very well with representing urban design ideas of ‘nodes’, ‘districts’ and the like as well as the concept of ‘urban villages’. It would be great to see this sort of clear visual thinking/design link in with the way in which we map and signpost our cities in the future.
The idea of a ‘united LDN’ made up of all its smaller boroughs, or urban villages, paves into thinking about the wider development of the city. Mainly through taking the drain away from transport and commuting into the more sustainable practices of working locally, shopping locally etc, as well as the promotion of under-used areas of London, and the reinvigoration and re-imagination of suburban districts.
This sort of ‘united and unique’ highly visually stimulating approach to
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