Our hole in the bucket
Bucket no 17 by Studio Pip and Co.
Presented by Ambiguous and Knew Design, There’s a Hole in my Bucket is
an online gallery that is publishing photographs of up to 100 numbered buckets, taken by people across Melbourne to signpost examples of faulty design. The project aims to encourage people to think about the design that is inherent in everything we encounter, and by highlighting what is bad, encourage us all to think about good design, and what it means.
The studio was invited to submit an everyday encounter that could benefit from a healthy dose of sound design thinking. We chose to focus upon public transport. Melbourne has such a great public transport network that would benefit from an ongoing liberal dash of creative thinking and dreams put into action. Public transport is a design brief that has endless outcomes, countless benefits and has a active role to play in the sustainable future.
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Worst public-transport design of the century award goes to the signage for Melbourne’s transport system introduced for the Commonwealth Games. Fine white type on apple-green background, impossible to read, helvetica light (the imagination that must have taken!), signs small, unlit and badly placed so as not to be visible from within a tram when one is approaching a station, or from across the road, or when it is even slightly dark. I live in Melbourne and can never be certain if I’m getting out at South Melbourne or St Kilda until I’m half way out of the tram - God help the tourists. Compare these signs to those for Sydney trains - beautiful large serif black type on large white panels announcing ‘REDFERN’ or ‘CENTRAL’, visible from your seat both at night and day, as the train first enters the station, repeated at regular intervals, loud and proud.