COMPATIBILITY OF VISIBILITY AND HARMONY OF PICTOGRAM -FOCUS ON RESTROOM MARK-

Abstract

In recent years, there are various design signs to guide people. In the signature "pictogram" which enables guidance without using words is often used. However, when looking into the building, the signature using the pictogram is given its own design to match with the indoor space, and signs which are difficult for the user to understand are distributed. It can be thought that these pictograms are being redesigned to adapt to architecture. Therefore, the research aimed for a sign plan which is easy for users to understand, and thought that standard pictograms harmonizing with various buildings are necessary. Visibility is important for pictograms, and in this research, the objective is to study the conditions of pictograms that compatibility of visibility and harmony.For reference to the research conducted for each generation, The author conducted an experiment using the pictogram of the Japanese Industrial Standard toilet mark, which had high recognition among all generations. The author divide the pictograms into pictograms for men and women whereby the existing designs filled with color and new designs with only contour lines are more harmonious using textures of concrete, brick, white wall, wood pictograms were synthesized. The author compared with that pictograms . As a result, The author received responses that the design of only the outline of the pictogram for men and the pictogram for women is more harmonious in all scenes. Among them, both male pictograms and female pictograms showed significant differences in the two scenes, and a significant trend was observed in the remaining two scenes. The author conducted  experiments on the width of the contour line using 4 scenes images same as comparison and study the pictograms of the line widths with the greatest thickness. As a result, there was not much difference in the width of the width of the contour line of the pictogram in all scenes of male pictograms and female pictograms. The author discussed the effect on visibility and harmony by shape and color as future prospect.