Study on the Signage System of Urban Space－ Taking Cijin District of Kaohsiung City as the Target of Creative Design

[[abstract]]Abstract Urban planning all along aims at providing the people in urban area with a perfect living environment. This paper studies and designs the signage facility for the space of certain regions in a city. The signage facility of a city can be applied to its road system, doorplate indication, public facilities, education environment, medical service area, commercial business and entertainment circles, exhibition facilities, and so on. The arrangement of moving line for the territory of the environment in these public spaces is in need of a signage system to give clear indications. This creative design only focuses on certain regions of vast space to design the structure and planning of a signage system. Speaking of the signage, guidance, narration, identification and display, they are always associated with the function-oriented indication board, guiding board, notice board, circular board, road plate, doorplate, castle that symbolizes the spirit of an ethnic group, and so on. All of these are simply erected gradually or temporarily at the major traffic junctions, places crowded with people or the symbolized regional area, but rarely given the concern of environmental graphic design. This paper firstly takes the urban environment and human behaviors as the basis to investigate the definitions for the use of street facilities and urban image. After that, the paper applies visual communication design to the artistic display of an environment, and brings semiotics to the theoretical foundation study of the signage identification design of space. Finally, the study considers ergonomics in the design of the scale of facility, and gives practical proof. With the creative design, the study plans to propose the system formation foundations and system design foundations for the “Signage System of Urban Space,” by taking Cijin District of Kaohsiung City as the territory of the creative work. Being a place that flourished earliest in Kaohsiung City, Cijin District will be the best scenic spot for development of cultural tourism. The five basic forms of the real urban pattern, namely “paths,” “edges,” “districts,” “nodes” and “landmark,” proposed by Kevin Lynch (1918 - 1984), an American scholar of city design, in his book The Image of the City, are employed by the creative design as the formation foundation structure of the entire space system. Besides, the design of the system takes the five main points, namely “vision display,” “shape style,” “application of materials,” “moving line planning” and “scale arrangement,” as a reference for the design foundation of the entire design plan.