GARY WESTON CASE STUDY : InfoTag Graphic Information System (1987)
Background
Communicating essential information to low literacy groups, people with learning difficulties, the aged, young children, foreign immigrants and to audiences where leaflets and printed information is outside their lifestyle, traditions and culture is a massive challenge for social service teams, local councils NHS services and support teams such as fire services, waste services, etc.
When travellers and gypsies arrive and set up home in any area, they automatically come under the jurisdiction, control and responsibility of that council and local services. Northampton Area Health Authority, Northamptonshire Social Services and the local NHS looked to a graphics-only single sheet leaflet to convey essential health and safety information to arriving gypsies and travellers – road safety, bonfire safety, water cleanliness, sanitation, babies, waste, animals, education, etc.
A design brief was created and issued to leading local design agencies and graphic designers in the Northamptonshire area. The brief essentially called for the design of a graphic only style single page A4 leaflet, with no text. All agencies and designers responded with various leaflet designs comprising of different graphic approaches. I responded with a solution and design based on solid research, focus testing and ‘thinking outside of the box (brief)’ and ‘InfoTag’ was borne.
Rationale
1. First I needed to research about gypsies and travellers and then I visited their camps to meet and speak to their people to find out more about them and their lifestyle.
2. My study and research with travellers and gypsies as the prime target audience revealed important facts such as: 1) issuing an information leaflet or any printed information was completely inappropriate to their lifestyle and culture. With limited space, they also had no place in their caravans for printed material. 2) Gypsies and travellers by nature were outdoor travelling people and not static readers. 3) Most travellers and gypsies could not read or write. 4) Most importantly there is a fundamental learning difficulty problem preventing the reading and absorbing of written and printed information off a page. 5) These people simply were suspicious of officials and official literature given to them.
3. I concluded issuing information on printed media was a waste of time, resources, money, and would explain perhaps why these leaflets were in the past received with disdain and destined on receipt to the nearest waste bin.
4. A completely new thinking, approach and media was required to overcome these key obstacles for receiving, accepting, and absorbing key information that was in fact information to help them and the local support services.
Development
I set about with a concept for my InfoTag graphic information system and refined and developed the system in close collaboration with the local gypsies and travellers with whom I had now developed a position of trust and acceptance that I was working with them to help them.
It was important that any graphic information system stood a better chance of acceptance by gypsies and travellers if developed with the help of gypsies and travellers.
Once the InfoTag prototype had been developed, it was then carefully specified and costed for cost efficient production with local printers.
Solution
InfoTag firstly separates the individual pieces of key health and safety information required for communication into separate pages – or in this case ‘tags’ – each held together loosely by a brass ‘snake chain’.
I learned from my research and studies with gypsies and travellers that most importantly when reading a sentence off a page – the other information is looking at them, causing confusion and preventing them from concentrating on this sentence and absorbing the information – hence the perceived learning difficulty. Separating this information from the rest made learning easier.
This brass chain was important as it not only was an easy means of collation in production but enabled InfoTag to be hung in a moving caravan rather then take up space in caravan draws and cupboards – which also meant InfoTag was easily seen and close to hand for everyone in the family.
As each hung loosely together on the snake chain, this gave InfoTag a perceived ‘toy like’ handling which was far removed from printed leaflets and essentially enabled the navigation and locating of the contained information much more quicker and easy for the gypsies and travellers than the format of printed and stapled pages.
Because of the outdoor lifestyle of gypsies and travellers, the individual ‘information tags’ (hence InfoTags) are each clear laminated making them weatherproof, crease proof and more durable to constant handling.
The information on each tag was portrayed and designed graphically and with loose sketch illustration in the gypsies and travellers colours, style and cultural format – important for acceptance. The designed pages also contained key instantly recognisable images to their lifestyle and culture – water churns, caravans, scrolls, roses, caged birds, dogs, etc.
The information on each side of each Infotag was divided into 2 boxes depicting the correct and wrong way to do things and at each corner of the box was a happy, or angry/sad face because facial expression is very important to gypsies and travellers. (Gypsies and travellers will tell you they can tell everything about a person from their eyes and face).
Using this design strategy further, within the information was also contained the happy friendly faces of key members of the local social services team to culture a feeling of trust and acceptance as well as familiarity when staff arrived at camps.
Conclusion
InfoTag was voted a 100% success and the perfect solution to a long running problem. I won the brief and commissioned for 2 years to work with Northamptonshire NHS, Northampton Health Promotion, and various other local Social Services to develop the Infotag graphic information system further.
To help further with Infotag acceptance within the gypsies and traveller communities, I included a useful gypsies and traveller calender reference of national events and fairs.
I was also able to devise a design strategy for incorporating advertising within the InfoTag solution enabling local pharmacies, chemists, and shops to promote their local facilities which helped the local councils offset their InfoTag production and development costs.
InfoTag was offered as a ready-made solution to other local councils, social service departments and NHS regional trusts at that time.
Such was the positive and cost saving impact of InfoTag for local services, InfoTag was presented to the Home Office and Central office of Information for further analysis for additional applications amongst community and social groups, for people with learning disabilities and learning difficulties, schools and other learning centres and information points.
InfoTag was nominated for the 3M award for Innovation and to this day is part of the ICIS, Information for Life government assisted charitable association, helping people with learning obstacles, foreign immigrants and the aged.
Research, study and understanding of the key target audience(s) – together with an open creative strategic approach – was paramount to success and in determining the right strategy and cost effective client solution.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION REGARDING THE INFOTAG GRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEM AND OTHER DESIGN SOLUTIONS, PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR MY PROJECT ENQUIRY FORM
