Unzipped Toronto: Reviewing the Exhibit’s Information Design
The Unzipped exhibit by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) visited Toronto in the fall of 2018. It was a very photogenic exhibit and the pavilion created mesmerizing curves with its rectangular blocks. It was certainly something that was instagrammable and a hot spot for photographers and influencers.
I visited in October and noticed this near the entrance of the pavilion:
The legend in the sign did not match the graphic of the buildings. We have:
Pink = residential
Blue = creative space
Yellow = retail
The colours that appeared in the building graphic have pink, blue, and green. I think this could easily have been a miss in terms of printing or maybe a hiccup in logistics. I have no expertise in making signage, and maybe it is difficult to get colours right. But the end result affects communication and here, it is not clear where retail space is in the building graphic.
This article isn’t a put-down on the Unzipped exhibit. The exhibit had gorgeous models of buildings throughout the word by BIG and had stunning, forward-thinking concepts. However, I thought the exhibit could have deployed more tools that an information designer would use. There were a couple of things I noticed that I thought could have been improved on from an information design perspective. I am more specialized in data visualization than environment design, so I am also going to talk a bit about how data viz practitioners might approach this challenge.
What worked well
One of the things I learned about giving feedback involves talking about what went well and what needs improvement. It’s not just about pointing out people’s problems or weaknesses, it’s about focusing on the things that were positive and things that could be better. So in doing this review, it’s only fair I talk about what was great about the exhibit.
The information design aspect of this exhibit is a small part of the entire exhibit. The other parts were extremely novel and impressive. The pavilion itself is quite the structure: it is comprised of 1802 stacked fibre glass boxes and when fully assembled, measures 27 metres (88.5 feet) long, 12 metres (39 feet) wide and 14 metres (46 feet) high. Almost resembling a large-scale of LEGO blocks, this form allows it flexibility to travel between cities.
The exhibit was nicely divided into sections, each representing a project BIG worked on. Each section was anchored by a sign explaining its story and a model. There were videos and photos incorporated into the blocks itself which complemented the exhibit’s models very well.
This was a free event and it came with a free postcard, which is an awesome bonus.
Probably the biggest attraction of the exhibit were the physical models. The models were so interesting to marvel at and it brought so much context to the exhibit’s story and purpose.
What needs improvement
The communication done through information design was lacking. There were a lot of rules broken in the information design. I have focused on the aspect of designing with colour in this entire section. Let’s review this further.
Designing a consistent system is hard for unique components
With 10 sections in the exhibit, it is hard to create a cohesive system that works for everything. The content of the exhibit is a collection of 10 projects by BIG, each unique in its own way. It becomes hard to talk about each one using one cohesive visual system.
The signs above show the graphics are consistent with transparent drawings. The ones below all vary and look completely different from the ones above. As a result, they all do not look cohesive even though they are all part of the same exhibit.
In data visualization, there is usually consistency in the content. In the highly popular work by The Pudding on Human Terrain, it shows the population densities of the whole world. We can see here that the lines pointing upwards represent population and the denser it is, the more lines we see. We can expect this to be true no matter which parts of the world we look at, the rule will remain consistent.
But how do you design consistency when the parts are not of the same variables? In the example above, the variable we look at is population. However, the Unzipped exhibit shows something different in each section and it is hard to maintain consistency as it lacks shared variables. Although consistency among sections might not be possible, there should still be consistency within each section.
For example, Big U is a project aimed at protecting against environmental vulnerabilities in Manhattan. The area outlining along the shore looks like the letter ‘U’, giving this project the name Big U. After looking at the photos, it was frustrating to see how colour was not strategically used here. The colours changed frequently and actually some repeated, we see red show up twice here. The colours were poorly used. It’s very important to be intentional when it comes to colour choices. It wouldn’t have been too hard to use the same colours on the left image and bring it over to the right one.
The image on the left could’ve used a legend to explain what each colour represented. I think it would have worked well with the photos below if they coordinated the colours well. I thought there was a lot of opportunity to have all the elements of this section speak to each other with better information design.
So how does it look like when colours are used intentionally as a system? Although the TTC, the public transportation system in Toronto, is not perfect, the newer stations were created with a good understanding of how colours coordinate. The pinkish-purple line in the station on the top of the signage matches that of the colour in the transit map on the right side. Colour can can be meaningful and useful.
Eliminate what’s not needed
Or as Edward Tufte would say, consider data-ink ratio. What is the bare minimum needed to convey the key message?
For example, is the dark grey part necessary here? Do aspects other than what is highlighted really help enhance the key message? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t, but it is a question that needs to be asked.
With this sign, there is also an accessibility challenge:
We see that it’s not very easy to distinguish the highlighted colours against the grey parts. This is all the more reason to silence the grey aspects, maybe they could be in a lighter shade, so it creates more contrast against the highlighted sections. The other approach is to limit dependency on colour, and just make the section we want in a strong black and all else in very, very, very light grey. Maybe like the below sign:
So we begin to wonder, what is the point of colour if we can communicate without it. Can we consider colour to be unnecessary and contributing to poor data-ink ratios? I think colour is a source of information, but if used well, it can be very pleasing too. It’s fun to look at and it evokes emotion. Colour is very tricky. If used improperly, it can be very frustrating and confusing. But if used properly it can delight. I really like this by Samantha Zhang:
Colour is challenging to design with, but when done well, it can serve and delight people.
Working with colour in architectural diagrams
Here’s another challenge I thought was interesting.
This one had colours that were too similar, the dark orange and the light orange. The green and orange clashes overlap and is hard to distinguish if you have colour-blindness.
The key thing we need to show are the four main elements in the legend. “Commercial (within existing heritage)” has a very similar colour as “Commercial (within new construction)”. It is also difficult to distinguish the green from the oranges. How can we work around this? Maybe we can add texture, like dots or lines to show it is different? Or maybe we can choose better colours? I decided to tackle this challenge by re-creating the diagram with simple vectors:
Below is a breakdown of my analysis of how we can improve on the diagram:
Challenge 1: The colours for commercial spaces are too similar and hard to distinguish:
- We want to show that altogether, there are two types of commercial spaces
- We should still keep similar colours for the commercial spaces to signal that they are similar types of spaces
Challenge 2: The colours green and orange are too similar:
- We should still keep green as the colour to represent terraces as that is very intuitive to associate. Terraces are associated with being outdoors, and green represents plants which are associated with being outdoors.
- It would be confusing to add texture to the shapes, such as dots or lines, because they could be confused as actual elements on the building. Adding texture works for bar charts as people won’t take it literally and will understand it is just a form of encoding. People might not make the same interpretation on building diagrams and might take it more literally.
After I explored some alternatives of showing the same information, my best suggestion was to split the diagram into two while maintaining as much of the essence of the original diagram.
The first highlights the residential and terrace areas, the other highlights the commercial ones. Below we how the re-creation fares with Photoshop’s ‘Proof Color’ tool:
The original idea of having both Commercial areas shaded in similar colours was probably to show that they commercial spaces. If the original diagram was split into two, we can see that the entire building is categorized as commercial or non-commercial. What we have achieved is a form of double encoding where we use similar colours to signal that they are commercial buildings, in addition, we isolate only commercial buildings to show they are similar.
Without allowing green and orange being part of the same diagram, we avoid them being confused with each other. We can show the legends for them separately and we can still allow green to be used to represent terraces.
Where is the best practice guide for environmental design?
It was really, really, really hard to find some good articles on best practices for environmental design from an information design perspective. I found way too many for UI design, specifically web and mobile interfaces. The lack of literature out there might be a reason why this exhibit had some shortfalls in its information design. I went through some books to see if there were any guidelines for this and it was not extensive at all. For example, I checked out “The Wayfinding Handbook” by Gibson and “Wayshowing>Wayfinding” by Mollerup. Both books are comprehensive in all the aspects of wayfinding, but not so much on information design. This makes sense since these books were meant to delve into all topics in wayfinding as an introduction, but I can see why some of the challenges I pointed out in this article would be overlooked.
It might be strange for someone who has no expertise in designing signs to review them. I agree. But it is also strange to me that someone on the team developing this exhibit overlooked some of what I pointed out in this article. Information design is at its core about communication. At the end of the day, I am interested to know if the viewer has actually understood what I wanted to tell them. I think that is the baseline for any type of design.
Walking through the exhibit was a quite the experience for me. I focused on a very specific aspect of the exhibit and gave a lot of attention to what could be better. But overall, it was very enjoyable. Probably 99% of the people who visited was not as bothered as I was on how colour was poorly used in the signage. And to be honest, most people probably don’t care. Many were probably there to enjoy the pavilion and add it to their social media feed.
Regardless, my goal is to help people understand the value that an information designer can bring to the table. Their expertise lies in user experience and a deep understanding of how various aspects connect to tell a cohesive message. Information design as a practice is challenging but it is probably one of the reasons why I chose this field. Every project is never the same and there is always room to learn. The topics are diverse and interesting. I hope I provided a glimpse into how I view the world through an information designer’s lens and how we can contribute to better understanding of the world we live in.
