TRAFFIC DATA
People's social activities are becoming more frequent as time goes by, but the imperfect urban transportation system is increasingly becoming a significant bottleneck limiting urban development. I want to design a series of fonts connected to 26 congested cities in China to address this problem. Through data visualization, real-time traffic conditions are shown to everyone to help them make better travel plans and alleviate urban traffic problems to some extent.
RESEARCH
I collected many road patterns and studied the structural relationship between roads and fonts. I found out the traffic flow gets denser at crossing and corners, and points are added to the fronts to indicate it.
The trend of traffic flow is similar to that of mass data, the effect of the light is more date sensitive, and data has many labels attached. Data lines in order are more aesthetic than lines out of order.
I made a few studies and finally decided to experiment in two ways, glow stick and software.
EXPERIMENT
STEP 1
Try swaying a light stick in a dark environment to imitate the graphic of a letter. The graphic effect is attractive, but the overall contour is difficult to control, and data visualization is currently not technically possible.
STEP 2
Try using software to complete the final production. The outlines of 26 letters are drawn based on research results. I need to transform data lines to meet the expectation of data visualization.
DEVELOPMENT
According to the latest traffic flow data report, I drew a map of the 24h traffic average data of 26 cities in 2017. Through these maps, I can draw the traffic flow lines of the selected cities, and the dense traffic points of the peak are clear in turn.
I selected six representative fonts for visual experimentation. A font outline is drawn on a paper of grids. According to the traffic data on the map, traffic density at different times of the day is depicted, and values are marked at the peak of the traffic data.
Via PS, the value on the grid paper is outlined again, and the basic font outline is completed. The white background can't reflect the data flow very well and is replaced by a black background, and the letters are processed with a reverse white effect. Add information tags by 24 hours. Improve overall structure and build up a visual and genuine relationship.
LAYOUT
