4.1 - 'Grading Icons' Exploration
For my key which will be feature three symbols used to grade my locations, I wanted to focus on three attributes:
01. Gift Range
02. Price
03. Location
01. The first one is gift range and to show this I wanted it to be whereby the higher the frequency of the symbols portrayed the higher/larger the products available to be used as a gift. Initially from my tutorial lecturers I was urged to show this through perhaps the generically wrapped cube with a bow and stripes. I liked the idea of showing a wrapped gift however felt this style in particular woul be perhaps too cheesy and not emphasize this original concept for gift giving. As a result I decided on illustrating a rather creased wrapped gift that had wrapping paper perhaps made out of brown paper. This idea came about due to my experiences of often going into smaller shops and their gift wrapping being relatively neutral and often just brown paper for environmental reasons. Below is my final design for this symbol.
02. My second grading point is Price. This is fairly self explanatory as to what the symbol could be and I dont want to over complicate it e.g. a stack of money. I therefore chose to go for a simple $ symbol, whereby the more the there are on the key, the more expensive the average price of an item is. The symbol is in a vivid yellow, the same yellow seen on Precinct35's tote bag.
03. My final grading point is location. I had previously thought about doing a generic city skyline, however for this I wanted to make it specifically relevent to Wellington. All of my locations are situated in Central Wellington and so it was quite hard coming up with something that would represent this.
The first thing that popped into my mind as a middle point for all my locations, was Cuba Street and so I therefore decided on using the famous water fountain as the symbol for this attribute. Using a photo of google as I reference I illustrated the fountain, avoiding adding any sense of depth and texture, as the symbol needs to be clearly distinguishable when made small on the location spreads. Below is the finished illustration for this.
