I visited the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds City Museum and the Leeds Art Gallery, I looked at the way finding within these establishments, looking for maps, signage and clear examples of navigation around.
The aesthetic within the Leeds art gallery was very clean and spacious, each piece surrounded by clean white walls which made pieces stand and and be appreciated well. Many sections within the gallery were not well advertised or navigated to, though wall space was not an issue, I understand that putting directions near the pieces or in exhibitions could be confused as a piece of work itself but there could be more signage than what there was.
I saw a huge range of varying styles of art within the gallery and here a just a few I found really visually pleasing and interesting, I wanted to show some very contrasting styles which are up within the gallery to show that it could be a task to create signage for certain sections, perhaps splitting it into categories was my first thoughts yet I found that the artists would not classify there pieces within the small descriptive text beside the gallery pieces.
Both the Henry Moore Institute and the Leeds Art Gallery had the map of the building on show when first entering the buildings. Both taking very different approaches to showing the layout of the building, with the Henry Moore Institute they have gone for a very simple shape and type style with thick block lines representing each floor and lines to represent stairs which though simple is a clear and well representative idea, this style shows that a full floor plan is not necessary. I want to create a similar style of design to the Moore institute with the map being shape and line with some type rather than having a full floor plan.
Within Leeds Art Gallery there are some subtle signage pieces which are simple arrows pointing in various directions yet I found the sign 'Exhibition continues' a lot around the gallery which gives little information and I felt that the placing of these signs were not very well thought out as they would be next to pieces of art or in doorways where you can clearly see the exhibition continues, what I thought would be more useful was names of some artists or pieces which were in the room perhaps on the door or door way along with the actual exhibitions names instead of just 'exhibition'. I only found one example of using an artists name in directions to pieces of work and that was for the section with Mikhail Karikis' work within, I felt this should have been employed for different artists work and exhibition pieces.
I looked at general building signage within both Leeds Art Gallery and Leeds City Museum which employ similar styles of signage pointing to basic things such as Lifts, toilets and cafe or food areas. These signs should differ from the signage used for exhibitions but only slightly, they should be able to work as a set, perhaps keeping the type the same but changing the boldness or making a larger pictogram next to the type.
I other methods of putting across information within Leeds Art Gallery, for example on the left are the stairs to the second level of the gallery these are old stone steps with a long thick piece of metal with names of the companies which have donated and funded the gallery I like this idea and it could be changed to names of artists who are upstairs of the gallery or of the exhibition names. On the left is events listing for the gallery, this idea could be changed to show the directions to the event within the building using colour or arrows. I could also use a full wall piece to show whats going on within the gallery at all times listing artists or rooms and using colour directions so that colours can be associated to certain rooms so that they are easy to navigate between.
I found this signage within the Art Gallery directing to the Library, Lift and shop within, yet I did not like the fact that it was a different looking style of sign to the others within the building, it does stick to the same font yet the style of sign differs, I feel that all the signage should have a similar look and style to the others within but be clearer for more important or regular parts of the building, i.e the toilets.
Currently being Exhibited is The British Art Show, a national touring exhibition which looks at some of the UK's contemporary art scene. The British Art Show has a huge number of artists contributing to this exhibit, artists who have developed new ways of thinking about and approaching materiality. When I visited this exhibition, which took up a huge amount of space within the building, I found some very interesting pieces of art and artists which I was really interested in, such as Stuart Whipps, particularly his piece 'The Kipper and The Corpse' where he has completely stripped down a 1275 GT Mini to its frame, the car frame sits in the gallery on a platform with clearness around it, it is very striking and interesting how he has stripped down this car to its bare minimum, I can incorporate this way of thinking into my own design work.
