No need to reinvent the wheel

1. Where has this semester gone? It only felt like yesterday when I was presenting to MFA/MA 1 students. 2. Why do the most inspirational ideas come to me at the end of the semesters? It's a conundrum I'm not a fan of, same with that of why are porcupines and hedgehogs so cute but have an anti-cuddling layer around them.

 What I'm trying to do is get public transportation commuters to enjoy the journey, not the destination. How similar is that to my postgraduate journey? Quite. I did a few brainstorming exercises and the word that kept popping up was 'wheel.'

The wheel was invented to transport heavy objects from one location to another; of course in the early to late Neolithic era, I doubt such 'heavy objects' were people. In any form of transport today, this is what we rely on. We rely on the action of an axle overcoming friction to produce a 'rolling' motion, to get us to our destination. But take away the mechanics of a vehicle, the invention of a car, go back to the beginning. The origin. While we're on our journeys, it's the essence of the wheel that moves us. Gets us to where we need to be.

There is no arguing that the current Lothian bus pass design is obnoxious - it is busy, has bright obnoxious colours and by no need encourages a message of joy. Rather it encourages commercial work for Lothian buses. That boggles me, if someone has already purchased a bus pass, why advertise to them more? Clearly they are already going to be riding on the bus more, due to this purchase so there is no need to send a vibe of BIG BRIGHT LOOK AT US!

Now at this moment, feel free to tease me about my photo. In my defense, it was pouring down rain that day and I had no intention of looking good...but yes, moving on.

I got excited over the idea: what if I owned a bus company and I was to design for myself - what would it look like? I went through many designs, often it looked like someone threw up on my Illustrator artboard.

Many ideas popped up incorporating the theme of the wheel, but also working as best as I could to keep a clean cut feel, oh how that's hell for me.

The idea I finally settled on combined a simple wheel feel with that of a cool blue relaxing idea.

The logo was taken from the similar geometric objects found in my earlier helvetica explorations. The text on the back says: "Research has proven that human touch improves pulmonary function, reduces stress, lowers blood glucose and improves immune function. So next time someone bumps into you on the bus know you're better for it." Cheeky? Probably.

The hand was a random thought that popped into my head. Something for bus commuters to use and WAVE to car commuters. When they're at a traffic signal, of course. Don't want to cause an accident. On the back of the hand, it says: Sit back, relax, enjoy the ride.