Final YOU - ARE - HERE map ended up as kind of an interesting prototype, communicating profile information about a London area.

Some more screen printing and experimentation ensued. These are shots for my research book.

The next round of feedback suggested that it wasn't 100 per cent clear what was happening. Also I had gone a little bit away from the format. I also thought that the graphics were a little negative, and although critical analysis was good, I wanted something positive, which was what the little booklet listing people's 'places of desire' did. I took another step back and considered an earlier idea, a You Are Here map, a stand alone map situated in the place. I could incorporate the positives from the booklet and advertise an area such as Archway, by possibly doing a bit more research to uncover people's secret spots in the area, and show materials in a positive light and I also wanted to keep the visibility/ invisibility concept but to show of nice places. I thought that the materials/ textures part could replace the objects phase of the previous work, and could also serve to give identity to an area when organised, almost like a flag. The gradient of visibility should be appealing, and the signs concentration prints could highlight nice eating spots, etc. It was also mentioned the colours on the previous poster were a bit bland and I should really consider past good design when trying this. The image here is from a Per Mollerup book, who mentions that a function of signs can be to lend identity.

I took a step back and my research came in handy. I was at the stage of profiling the environment based on what I had read and backed up by the previous little experiment. I wanted to show what was interesting - the concentration of signs and symbols we have to make sense of, the difficulty and pleasure of closed/ open spaces. Also found objects were great representations of character and activity in an area. I produced graphics in order to highlight these 3 areas. Also a booklet to position the posters in a sense of - I've highlighted the problem, this is a little solution - people's opinions as to what's wrong/ good with London places and some little tips of favourite places.

Feedback from the latest tutorial suggested that there was something in the idea of the way that people see things, the spaces that they gravitate towards. I did an experiment with a friend where we walked around the neighbourhood and I asked him to draw a map from memory. The results were great, he explored the area and especially gravitated towards green open spaces and then draw his journey from memory. A possible concept at this stage was to repeat this with several people to get a 'common' picture, maybe overlaying the work. It was felt in the next tutorial that although this was an interesting idea, they would not be my graphics shown and I was a bit in dangerous territory as it wouldn't be my work.

After the latest tutorial I got some great suggestions from people contributing. Someone suggested I 'get lost', not in a bad way, but that maybe go to an area I didn't know and try and find my way around whilst recording it. It was suggested that it was all at this present time a bit confused and that I shouldn't try and shoehorn things into a final result, although intensive work was also needed. I hit on the idea that I could invite people I know, as interviewing the public extensively can have issues, and ask them to draw a map of my area from memory after walking around the place. I would also have a record of their movements and the places they are attracted to. After a couple of suggestions of filming things in recent tutorials I thought that this could really be an interesting record along with accompanying graphics. I wanted to screen print and photograph some found objects, as I think this is a very expressive medium and the facilities are there. I would need to organise the graphics to make sense, and I thought overlaying the drawings onto each other to investigate similarities between people would be appropriate. Also found objects could symbolise the participants' memory process and movements, e.g. landmarks, symbols, green spaces, tracks etc. I would need to research printing to help shape the graphics.

In reading the Lynch book I found research had been done into cognitive maps that residents had of Los Angeles, Boston and New Jersey. He classified the impressions of places into categories like tracks (roads), districts with different characters and nodes or intersections/ hub where people intersect. He refers also to the vividity and legibility of the city, in addition to places people associate with pleasure like green spaces and waterways. I thought that even with the research I had already done into people's likes/ dislikes, I could model my outcome along these lines.

I had no idea, however, how to show generating imagined worlds or how useful this was. Going back to the cognitive mapping in cyberspace I found research on how people have cognitive maps of their cities and salient points. This seemed very much in tune with the thrust of my research. Shown here is city planner Kevin Lynch's study of Boston and L.A. cognitive maps.

I was starting to think about how to apply all this to the final outcome. Imaginary (independent) product advertising, wayfinding in space/ cyberspace and parallels, journey to buy a loaf of bread, generating imagined worlds... The cyberspace one was interesting but I wasn't doing anything digitally and it wasn't quite what I'd been exploring. The bread thing was a bit banal, the advertising one was hard to link to maps and wayfinding. The imaginary worlds mapping would be great, I had researched people's favourite stories etc. so found this interesting. The hub cap I found reminded me of J.G. Ballard's Concrete Island - the character crashes his car and gets stuck on a traffic island throughout the entire book...Comic book cartography was also visited.

Further object collecting, referencing the strategies we use for wayfinding. FROM TOP: trackfollowing (roads), strategy, ask a local expert, aiming, add to cognitive map, increase chances of finding.

I went out to 'reappropropriate' some found objects, what I found that was interesting was not what I had necessarily set out for. This hub cap from the roadside made me think of urbanisation and how the car contributes to our environment visually. Also I remembered the advertising technique of simply showing stuff. Spare parts shop in Stoke Newington I had walked past in admiration many times here.

I looked at old ironmongers' signs (BOTTOM LEFT) - finding that it was the place you went to get candles in Victorian times so, an important place. The bush sign shown (BOTTOM RIGHT) denotes a local wine found in Vienna. The metallic pattern (RIGHT) is a picture often hung in old ironmongers to advertise the masses of screws and nails, courtesy of an Alan Fletcher book. A wayfinding book reiterates that the best advertising is often the goods themselves outside shops. This all encouraged me to think about the reappropriation of objects in the visual language of wayfinding, in 3D. As well as the symbols touched on here, I started to think about how we actually navigate, hierarchical choices, searching for landmarks, asking local 'experts' and adding it all to our cognitive maps.

(RIGHT: patterns from dwindling tribes around the world in 'Knowmad' map project)

Directions I wanted to go in next were: opening scene out from London-centric point of view; mapping change and also retaining some of the independent shops ideas that had interested people who'd done questionnaires. Also, it was mentioned that going forward from Starbucks I might want to chart the growth of Tesco, or say, the decline of local ironmongers in a context less tied down to London.

(RIGHT: Starbucks cups representing the concentration of outlets in greater London)

I explored starbucks again with different materials. It made me think of reappropriation of objects which had come up in the last college session. It wasn't judgemental but more of an exploration. I wouldn't be too tied down to the content, (which was very important), but the format reference was definitely a major part of the brief, and I was trying to keep in mind the self-reference of formats.

(RIGHT: Profile of Starbucks/ McDonalds sales globally)

After showing the prototype at the latest tutorial, there were a lot of questions that came up -

Who cares? In a good way, I had to consider that not everyone might not be affronted that there were a lot of Starbucks in London, it might not be a big surprise.

I had a notion that I could do independent vs. chain comparisons and that my project would then be sorted. But then I would be doing the 'thinkable' thing mentioned in Darren's tutorial. I would no longer be exploring. I decided that if I was to show this kind of corporate information it shouldn't be militant but just non-judgemental. Notes from the tutorial made me consider: is my outcome going to be presenting?; telling a story; making people aware?

Other useful thoughts were exploring the relationship between 2d - 3d, as I had started to do.

The clay model represents all the Starbucks outlets in greater London - with a massive concentration in the West End and City.

The second two maps (TOP) are extentions of the layers idea I sketched. This denotes Starbucks concentration (judged us undesirable by my interviewees), all-night eating places (desirable) and football stadiums (favourite places).

After showing my prototypes it was thought I might want to continue the 3D theme. I was encouraged to research the visual language of maps and consider materials. Reappropriated objects for example, like Starbucks cups. The content could be flexible as the format was starting to be explored, as per the brief.

After ideas generation and concept challenge workshops I started to think about how to represent some of the more interesting answers I found, such as people's likes/ dislikes and favourite places. The original long questionnaire was sidelined as it seemed like I knew what the political map stuff would look like already and I needed to explore much more.

Temple: Location for 'Great Expectations'.

I went to the various places mentioned in people's fictional stories and questioned a few more people. The interviewee in Temple described his favourite London walk to Pall Mall and 'Old London'.

Heygate Estate: The setting for Michael Caine 'Harry Brown' film.

Fitzrovia: Location for Ian McEwan's 'Saturday'.

I thought that the way I would procede for further research was to go to the places where people's favourite fictional London stories were located, and to explore any links between them.

Some of the qualitative answers I got when testing my questionnaire were really interesting. Asking people to draw a doodle of their perfect image of London yielded some great images. Also people I asked specified what their favourite stories set in London were, where their favourite place was and what type of places we need more/ less of.