Aina
Identity for an exhibition, planned around the visitor’s route through the space rather than around a list of deliverables.
Context
Aina means mirror in Hindi and Urdu. The exhibition is about reflection in both senses, and the space is built around mirrored and polished surfaces.
Approach
Before designing any piece I mapped the route a visitor takes: buying a ticket, arriving at the door, orienting at the threshold, moving through the rooms, sitting down, and leaving with something in hand. Each printed or screen item was given a place and a moment on that route, which made it much easier to decide what it should say and how large it should be.
- The identity is almost entirely black and white, so the architecture and the objects stay the loudest things in the room.
- One typeface in a short scale, spaced generously, because much of it would be produced by fabricators working from files rather than by a designer on site.
- The printed programme is written for afterwards, for reading at home, not for the walk through.
Learnings
Captions were set for reading at arm’s length, and in the busiest rooms people stood further back than that. I would test caption sizes with a full room, not an empty one.