A Study on the Universal Design for the Public Space Sign System

Abstract

Sign system is an effective guiding tool. Current sign system provieded a lot of convenience to the society by its unique design concept and forms. According to the diversity in counties, regions and level of economic development, sign system presented the different design features in the world. In developed countries, sign system has been relatively mature, it considered variety needs from different groups. The perfection of sign system is the way to measure the level of development, which reflected the importance of sign systems in social development. Based on the study on the literature data and case studies, I found that Sign system in developed countries attached importance to vulnerable groups which include disabled person, children, seniors and women (pregnant women). In this study, I found the cantorial issue by analyzing the paper, researched on cases from the United States, Germany, Japan and other developed countries and tried to analyze the crowd which Public Space Sign system concerned. Through the research, I found that Chinese Sign system haven’t pay much attention on vulnerable groups in China. In this study, I classified the Vulnerable Groups into different types of groups, with the actual needs of those groups in Sign System explored the crossover design concept of Universal Design . First, Vulnerable Groups focused on the needs of the blind people, the seniors and color weakness crowd. By analyzing the Sign system in German Historical Museum, I expanded the design ideas. In the Sign system for foreigners, seniors and children, color and word font are particularly important. The appropriate used of graphic design in German Airport Sign system accelerate the information capture of people, especially for the seniors and children. Secondly, the problems for disabled person in Guide system became apparent. Such as identifying issues for children in using the Sign system because of height problems; the special requirement for physically disabled people and pregnant women in using sign systems. Sign system of Umeda hospital in Japan met the needs of special groups with its unique design concept. Finally, I summarized Vulnerable Groups and Universal Design, I found the existence of Vulnerable Groups promoted social progress. Universal Design is also a powerful tool to discover the problem in social progress. According to the previous thesis research and case study, I found that developed countries payed attention on to different aspects in Sign system, and the national investment in research is large. From this point , Sign system reflected contribution to an area.