Bus Stop poster design

[planemad]

First draft of the design of the A3 sized posters that can be put up at bus stops.

Download full PDF

Important design decisions:

• Marathi over English. Marathi text will always be given priority over English wherever feasible to enable a better connect with the public. Marathi text will be mandatory for all headings and section headers. English numbers are given priority because of its higher universal value.
• Preserve legibility of route information over compactness. Bus route bars are spaced big enough that only 4 routes will fit in the first sheet and 10 routes in the subsequent ones without a map. A bigger stop will need a bigger print set, which is logical considering a larger number of people will be served.
• ChaloBEST logo was custom made because I could not find the original vectors. It does not match the existing one.

Other design features

• Unique BEST bus stop id is provided so that public can verify it is the correct stop.
• Provide a list of important places that are walkable from the location
• Provide indicative taxi fares to major transit centers in the city that will be useful for those in a hurry.
• Provide important phone numbers which will be useful to tourists and in times of emergency
• Visualize the route frequency information using circles to enable easier comparison of routes
• Include marathi route numbers since it is still the primary text on the route boards. However the english numbers are given more weight because it has universal value.
• A detailed route section which lists important junctions and changeover points on the route.
• Project info bar at the bottom which highlights the users who have contributed the latest information on the panel to encourage more participation.
• A url shortlink to ChaloBEST to enable easy access to the users to the information online.
• Fonts used are Adobe Source Sans Pro (open source) and Devanagri MT

To Fix

• Map is placeholder. It would be good to have a custom 2 color map that can be a visual aid to the information on the right.
• ChaloBEST logo. I'm not satisfied with the current placement, also the existing logo needs rework so that it can be used without a black background.
• Copy for the actual header and footer text for English and Marathi.
• Marathi text formatting is limited in Adobe Illustrator. This will only be fixed in the html layouts.
• Copyright info for the openstreetmap map

[notnarayan]

[planemad]

Shankar, I like the improvement. One reason I had put the phone numbers below was to accomodate more services/hotlines, but I guess its better to limit it to this.

The stop id will require shifting though. The stop names can become quite long and would not fit in that space with the id. e.g.. Dr.Shyamaprasad Mukherji Chowk.

[notnarayan]

[planemad]

The stop id is still getting more attention than needed due to the color and prominent placement. The only purpose of this is for someone to verify that the poster matches the id sign at the bus stop and is not really priority information, but more of an identification feature.

In any case, I think this is good enough to start working on the html. Thanks Shankar.

[notnarayan]

you could probable place it to the right of the poster. Why are you making this in html again?

[planemad]

The pdf will be autogenerated using data from pages like http://www.chalobest.in/stop/ptpaluskar-chk_2
A html template is required for the plugin to make those pdfs.

Users can print the posters and paste it at the appropriate bus stop, like one of those numerous piles flyers, except this is going to come in very handy for the people who wait.

[kabirkukreti]

The poster looks good.However I feel the following improvements will help:

• The site mention needs to be bigger, we want people to come to the site
• The poster should contain mention of SMS service, Android app
• Taxi and auto fares in a bus poster ?
• The 'marketing pitch' should be little more prominent

[planemad]

This will be of A3 size, so the width is roughly that of a 15" screen and everything will be bigger than what you see in the image. But then we will only get an actual idea of size/legibility wen we take some sample prints to see it works.

SMS service I had forgotten about. Since the ams requires multilingual instructions as well, maybe it is better to put that in a separate A4 poster which is also more ChaloBEST centric?

In certain travel situations where time is a factor, such information can allow the user to make a cost-benefit analysis of what is a more suitable travel option and also give an idea of relative distances from the current location. Taxis are also a para transit mode of travel and is not to be shunned completely. I agree that it could use some improvement to make it more useful, will try something out.

[shekhark]

Thanks Arun, my feedback:

1. Remove taxi and auto fares. We aim to get cars off the road. We can highlight other busses to prominent destinations. Also we have no control over fare rates and don't want to crowd stops with folks hailing cabs so busses can't access. This is a menace.
2. There should be equal placement and prominence for Devnagari (Marathi) and Roman (English) scripts everywhere. Inclusive of route numbers, stop names, area names, road names, and other details. Everywhere equal in both scripts with no exceptions.
3. Remove all the phone numbers for now. The only phone number that should be prominent is for our SMS service, +91.96195.24420.
4. We must incorporate ChaloBEST SMS instructions for English, Marathi, Hindi, Gujarati and Urdu (five scripts) verbatim as per https://github.com/chalobest/ChaloBEST/wiki/SMS-How-To on the poster itself. The suggested queries can remain in Roman script, only the instructions need be in different languages/scripts.
5. We need much more prominent display of ChaloBEST logos and elements as per the source images here https://www.dropbox.com/lightbox/home/chalobest/graphics/logos and the colour scheme therein.

Let me know when you can address and incorporate the above. Look forward to meeting in Mumbai next week to build these print stylesheets from our stop pages such as http://chalobest.in/stop/khodadad-circle_2/

[planemad]

Shekhar, I have pushed the initial html template for the design taking into consideration your feedback.

The taxi fares have been removed and I have shown bus route connections to nearby places instead.

Equal weightage to Devanagari and Latin is not possible without exception as it will mess with the information hierarchy. I suggest we evaluate this by each piece of information once the layout is in a more mature stage.

Phone numbers have been dropped.

SMS instructions and logos are pending.

[johnsonc]

Must say, this is superb stuff Arun, Shankar! Looks classy!

And to add to the poster map, How about this?
We can look into getting a line shape for each route that goes through the stop. The rendered map would then have a bunch of route lines, and maybe say a different colour for a ring route, Exp or AC. Would look pretty and also people could visually approximate where the routes are going.

[planemad]

Yup, that would be vey useful. I will include that in the next mockup.

[planemad]

I just committed the latest work. You can see it live on http://4thmain.com/tmp/poster/stop-routes-poster.html