Graphic Design 2.2: Design Futures, Project 1: ‘Back to the Future’ Exercise 1
Exercise 1: Designs for Change
Based on your research so far, design a set of pictogrammes/symbols that can be used as screen and print based icons for each of the four industrial revolutions.
You will need to design four symbols for each of the industrial revolutions and your final design dimensions should be 512 x 512 pixels.
You will need to:
Research the design of pictogrammes, symbols, icons and signs in order to inform the initial development of ideas and visual concepts. Document your research in your learning log.
Generate a range of initial ideas that explore the abstraction and simplification of your visual elements in order to produce a clear, effective and scalable symbol.
Consider, explore and test a range of decisions relating to weight of line, colour, tone and composition before deciding on which of your visual concepts should be developed further
Once you have finalised your designs, post them to your learning log and evaluate your responses in relation to the examples you identified in your initial research from the start of the exercise.
I continued into researching some more tactile looking illustrations/pictograms. This style could be interesting to experiment with as well as the cleaner icon style design.
Figures 19/20 show some more examples of a bold and minimal logo/icon design, using clean line work. Figure 21 is an example of the opposite, here is work by Peter Saville for Lacoste. These were his logo design experiments where he used different shapes, line weights and movement to represent the iconic clothing brand logo. This is a fun experiment and could be interesting to apply the same thought process to this task.
After collating some symbol/pictogram/logo references I continued to research each industrial revolution and made mood boards of imagery. I made notes, word maps and jotted any initial ideas.
I began by looking back at the previous research/reading tasks, and picked out some visuals that stood out to me in particular, shown below.
Figure 9 is a mood board collating my favourite elements of a visual identity by ‘Out of Place Studio’ for The National Education Nature Park. The icons created for this identity are a perfect example of meaningful, simple, fun designs with a colour palette that only adds to the meaning of the designs.
I began this task by collating visual references of symbols, icons, logos and signs of various different styles and functions in order to have a broad set of visual inspiration to draw from.
Figure 15 is another visual identity I came across when researching which has some great pictographs/icons as well as colours and line work that I can take as inspiration.
Figure 18 is a collection of Allan Peters’ icon/logo design work in black and white. The clean line work and bold imagery works so well, even in black and white. I would like to experiment with colour during this task as well as black and white/compare the effects of the use of colour/lack of within my designs.
Figure 24 (Video)
Figure 60:
Resources:
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Figure 2: Boulevard beer hall – carpenter collective (no date) Carpentercollective.com. Available at: https://carpentercollective.com/project/boulevard-beer-hall/ (Accessed: July 27, 2025).
Figure 3: Behance (no date) Behance.net. Available at: https://www.behance.net/gallery/8299263/piktogram (Accessed: July 27, 2025).
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Figure 29: Chong, A. (2020) In-depth: Time Consciousness and Discipline in the Industrial Revolution | SJX Watches, watchesbysjx.com. Available at: https://watchesbysjx.com/2020/07/time-consciousness-and-discipline-industrial-revolution.html (Accessed: 3 August 2025).
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Figure 32: Hull Corporation telephone, 1900-1910 (2024) Sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk. Available at: https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co33709/hull-corporation-telephone-1900-1910. (Accessed: 3 August 2025).
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Figure 34: Smithsonian (2011) Edison Light Bulb, Smithsonian Institution. Available at: https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/snapshot/edison-light-bulb. (Accessed: 3 August 2025).
Figure 35: Signal (2025) Wifi Logo Images – Browse 79,728 Stock Photos, Vectors, and Video, Adobe Stock. Available at: https://stock.adobe.com/uk/search?k=wifi+logo&asset_id=493603061 (Accessed: 4 August 2025).
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Figure 37: Chadwelltelecom (2024) From Bricks to Brilliant: The Mobile Phone’s Evolution, Chadwell Telecom. Available at: https://www.chadwelltelecom.co.uk/a-look-back-at-the-mobile-phone-evolution/. (Accessed: 4 August 2025).
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Figure 51: Figure 50: Wikipedia contributors (2025) Second Industrial Revolution, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Second_Industrial_Revolution&oldid=1306835008.
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Figure 56: Wikipedia contributors (2025) Second Industrial Revolution, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Second_Industrial_Revolution&oldid=1306835008.
Figure 57: Wikipedia contributors (2025) Second Industrial Revolution, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Second_Industrial_Revolution&oldid=1306835008.
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Figure 64: Cartwright, M. (2023) ‘Top 10 inventions of the industrial revolution’, World History Encyclopedia [Preprint]. Available at: https://www.worldhistory.org/article/2204/top-10-inventions-of-the-industrial-revolution/ (Accessed: 23 August 2025).
Figure 65: Cartwright, M. (2023) ‘Top 10 inventions of the industrial revolution’, World History Encyclopedia [Preprint]. Available at: https://www.worldhistory.org/article/2204/top-10-inventions-of-the-industrial-revolution/ (Accessed: 23 August 2025).
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