OUGD602 External Brief DBA Developing Top-Up Card

It was my delegated job to develop a design for the top-up card that we wanted to pitch instead of a ticket. The idea being that the hyper loop train is intended to be widely accessible and repeatedly usable so an Oyster like top up card would be much more conducive to repeated use and ease of doing so.

The first thing I wanted to create was the overall shape of the card and I needed this to fit with the logo that we have created so far. I too the glyph forms for inspiration and based the curvature of the card corners.

Then was to fit the logo in place on the front of the card. I looked at a very light blue grey background to introduce more colour.

However, I soon came up with the idea of having the key blue around the edge of the card. This would mean that when the card was put down it would reflect the light slightly and create a gentle blue halo around its edges. I also came up with the idea of calling the card and Air-Mile card, because it draws a parallel with the speed of air travel as well as  being a clever reference to the fact that the pods travel on air. 

I went through a couple of options for the sub font and font that source sans pro was by far the least offensive. It worked because it fell to the second place on the information hierarchy and let the logotype be dominant. I also found a really nice way of positioning this extra information because the ascenders and descenders create the perfect negative space. I tried both upper and lower case but felt that the uppercase worked better because it was less texturally bust than the ascenders and descenders of the lower case and again allowed the logotype to come to the fore. 

Because these cards have to be scannable upon entrance and exit to the so I took inspiration from the large circular curve on the Oyster card and used the 'o' from the logotype to create an active zone towards the end of the card. Thos was an intentional ergonomic decision that ensures that the holder doesn't have to bend the card to hold it over the scanner. Instead the curved edge sits in the palm and the majority of the card can be held while the corner is scanner.

I used the soft grey on the bad of the crds to add a little more visual texture to the design and to allow a signature/name space to help return of last cards, as well as an ident number and top-up info.

The next stage is to bring together the designs each of us have done for the different applications and make any tweaks to bring everything together in a cohesive way.