Start Here: June 5, 2025
Below are a series of images of my Design Brief for my Capstone Project to help kick off this final course...
June 9-15, 2025 (week 2)
This week I worked on the start of my logo and sign usage guide. The main focus for my Proof of Concept presentation was to solidify the design of the simplified TRT logo. This will be used throughout the trail system. Now the focus will move on to sign creation for the Prototype presentation next week. This guide will become a big part of my Capstone project.
I was also working on ideas for materials for use in the main sculptural signs I want to create as show pieces in town. I borrowed some larger stones from the trail to conduct some light and shadow studies. These may come into use later as the sign designs evolve. I love the color, texture, and form of these stones.
Here are some rough concepts for the main sign designs. I want to focus on these first. One, because they are the biggest hurtle right now. Two, because I feel the remaining hierarchy of signs for the system could and should stem from the solution to these larger signs.
June 19-22, 2025 (week 3)
Based on my sketches I've been able to create some sign concepts for portions of the trail. I have also designed a concept for an "archway", by request of Humboldt County Conservation. In an attempt to not make it look like every other archway on a trail system I utilized the border of the TRT logo for the form, like it's emerging from the ground. There will be additional signs to accompany this archway as well. You can read the caption on that page for more info. I have also been working on breaking down locations for signs and developing the sign hierarchy. I hope to have most of that completed for Sunday's Prototype. Unfortunately a family vacation is about to derail my progress for a few days. I feel like I'm at a solid spot though.
To help determine a hierarchy of signs, number of signs needed for each size in the hierarchy, and distances, I created this spreadsheet. It was created using data record with a Garmin bike computer on rides I've taken across the entire trail. This is still a work in progress, but it has already proved very useful
Slides from my finished Prototype Presentation.
Next steps are to continue sign refinement, work on sign variations for road crossings, bridges, end of trail, and Y or specialty intersections. I need to begin work on the connected website for the QR codes. I need to gather historical/nature related info for that website. I also have a user survey sent out to numerous people for feedback on what they would like to see for trail signage. Todd Lee with County Conservation is helping to track down other useful information.
June 23-29, 2025 (Week 4)
I put out a Google Form survey to numerous trail users on Sunday. I've got some promising early feedback reinforcing the direction I have been on for this project. I'd like to wrap up this research form by this weekend.
Updated pages from my Prototype Proposal with slight adjustment (addition) to deliverables and adjustments with more to-dos in my weekly schedule
Information to consider for sign and webpage content requested from Todd Lee of Humboldt County Conservation. Great info.
Additional information to consider for sign and webpage content from Humboldt historians at the Humboldt Historical Museum. More great info.
Updated Prototype. Additional sign creation, Icon revisions and updated signs containing icons, adjustments based on class and instructor feedback. Icons are on image 2. New signs are images 9-13.
June 30-July 6, 2025 (Week 5)
As the sign system continues to expand and evolve, I have also started the website portion of my design. I have been given access to a site created by a friends of the trail group for the Three Rivers Trail. The black header is part of their site. I am building a separate page within the site and will likely help them to revamp the overall look of the rest of the pages after this project is completed. This is still in the rough stage. I need to organize the relevant information and start to build it out. The Three Rivers Trail Sign System
For this week's addition to my project I focused on Photoshop mockups of several of the signs in their actual locations.
I continued work on my Capstone project page. I got most of the "Mockups" page put together. I worked on the CSS to get the page to appear and function the way I was hoping.
July 14-20, 2025 (Week 7)
Most of this week has been spent coding the Capstone website. I'm happy with the way it is turning out.
I've also done a few revisions to my designs based on classmate feedback on Canvas. Some examples are below.One concern on the "Special Signs" was the red seemed alarming when it formed an X. I agree and I'm glad someone said something. I changed the pathway illustrations on all of the special signs to reflect the golden brown trail color.
Another comment was that the large signs seemed too busy. They are designed to be modular. I wanted to showcase worst-case scenario. To help demonstrate the modular nature of the signs, I created a few new mockups showing a simplified version of the signs in location. This also demonstrate the flexibility of the system.
July 21-27, 2025 (Week 8)
I added a QR code sign specifically for the Trail Reporting App I prototyped and included in the mockups portion of the project. I then updated the family of signs slide. Finally, I updated the sign placement guide map for sign installers.