For the second part of this assignment we were divided into groups of 2-3 people and given the objective to use metaphor to re-design washroom signage for 2 different areas of the college (library, business wing, gymnasium, college bar etc,…)

I was put into a group of 2 and me and my partner started by moving to a quiet area to chat and brainstorm. Honestly we struggled a little coming up with ideas and choosing what locations we wanted to do.

We quickly realized that finding the balance between a recognizable, understandable and functional design and one that was metaphorical, creative, witty and not too vulgar was much MUCH more difficult then we thought it would be. But slowly we started getting somewhere after chatting and researching images of other unique bathroom signage.

I had the idea of using statistics or charts to design bathroom signage in the business wing. Either using actual (very sad and depressing) stats on how much men vs women make for doing the same job, or on how many women are CEO’s in Canada or own their own business. I also thought perhaps using the shape of different charts (bar graph, pie chart, Ven diagram) could imply gender stereotypes too.

After chatting more and sketching out LOTS of bad ideas we settled on my business wing stats idea, and on using the Rattlers sports area and parts of the snake to represent the different genders.

*we ended up changing the Rattlers idea later as it wasn’t working*

Below are some of those initial bad sketches and ideas