JISHNURAM C.A.
I have designed a bus route map for NID students as my graphic design studio project. It is a single sided printed map. The map is designed in such a way that it opens in three steps and the zigzag folding reduces the chance of tearing. Some specific information is added on the front and backside of the map and is visible once it is folded. So the user can easily access information without opening the whole map. However, the user needs to be able to fold back the map properly once he or she has opened it.
For the assignment I observed how students open and close the map. I had two maps that were printed on two materials. One is printed on thin paper and the other one is printed on stronger, synthetic paper. I gave the thin paper map to the first two students. They opened the map easily but had some problems in folding it back properly. So in the process the map was torn and I couldn’t give it to others.Then I gave the synthetic paper map to other students. Here I found one interesting thing — that most of them folded back the map properly. The thin paper map could be folded in any way but the people who used the stronger, synthetic paper map folded it back properly, or rather in the way I wanted them to fold it. The synthetic paper map had a tendency to fold back in the same direction because of its thickness and stiffness. From my observation the material itself guides the user to fold it back in the desired manner.
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Great !