My corner is located at the intersection of Arlington Street and Berkley Street, right by the Arlington T stop. I see it every morning and evening on my way, to and from school. The area is always buzzing with people. In fact that corner is usually the site of a pedestrian traffic jam when a lot of people are coming up from the T and crossing the street at the same time. There is a real mix of people in this area of Boston, as it is across the street from the Public Garden (a big tourist spot), has a bunch of retail shops, commercial businesses, and is right down the street from our school.
Therefore, I wanted a message that would address people from all walks of life, who I see hurrying around Boston. The message I chose was a quote my Mahatma Gahndi. It reads:
"There is more to life than increasing its speed."
I chose this message because it really spoke to me. Nowadays people go through life rushing; whether it's to get to a meeting on time, get through the week to the weekend, or even to their next milestone in life (engaged, married, have children, retire, whatever). They are pushing through life itself, and perhaps missing it along the way. This message to me is very soothing. To me, it says "hey you, cool it, take a breath".
I wanted a message that could have an impact no matter how close or far you were from it. When people were far away, all they can see is the word "life". They might be able to tell it has a little texture to it, which may encourage the person to cross the street and find out what it actually says. This essentially makes my audience DO what I'm trying to get across in the message. And vice versa. If someone's standing next to it, they may want to cross the street to find out what shape the repeated sentence is in.
The colour restrictions were a good thing for my design. I think if I was allowed colour, I would have come up with something that would essentially dilute the message. I had originally thought of using black, but reconsidered as the white markings would stand out more.
I knew what I wanted "life" to look like. It had to be lower case, and flowing from one letter into the next, so I chose to handwrite it. For the actual sentence, I thought at first it would be better to use a typeface, as I do not like my handwriting. But after much manipulation, the text looked overworked and awkward with all the angles and twists in the letters. In the end I wrote it out, which allowed for easy shifts in size, angle, and breadth of the words. Should I redo this project, I would like to make the thicks of the letters more extreme.
