Research on City Visual Identity and it's Elements in the Field of Graphic Design

Showing identity of something in the form of visual and written material, is one of the most complicated responsibilities of graphic designers and designing such projects for more complicated, multiple and widespread phenomena like cities, is even more difficult. Designing Visual identity for places and cities is the subject matter of this study which is an emerging discipline, and requires specialist attention. Nowadays, cities of the developed countries, apply different strategies, to distinguish themselves from others and draw attention in the scene of global competition; For this purpose there is a need to visual plans that integrate all these strategies and activities, and relate them to each other as a unit. These visual plans are called visual identity and graphic designers are responsible for designing it.
To investigate city visual identity we study the main elements and components of city identity at first, that any visual plan and identity design must follow up them to succeed. Then it is shown that identity of each city can be described, analyzed and measured through recognition experiments, and it is a necessary tool to help understanding the identity of the city and then applying it to it’s design. Finally we define and specify the key components of cities visual identity containing sign, typeface, color palette, websites, advertising campaigns, navigation system and pictograms that is extracted from heretofore designed projects like New York city, Amsterdam, Melbourne, Abu Dhabi and Santa Monica.
Also in this research differences of city visual identity with other types of it, like corporate and product visual identity are determined. The results showed that the most important urban visual identity projects are composed of other types of visual identity elements like sign, but perhaps the most important difference between them is that designers have more options to create the harmonic identity for city; for example a navigation system or other artificial elements of city environmental graphics can be used as facilities for designers intent to promote and disseminate their plan more and more extensive. Also we came to this conclusion that one of the most important elements of city visual identity which play a key role in the expression of identity is its website; a city website with classified information, appropriate appearance and sufficient Infography can communicates audiences who are out of a city and links them to related content, leading to positive image of the city and its identity.
Addressing this issue is of great importance because of not only it’s physical and cultural advantages for cities, but also this fact that designers are at the beginning of their path in designing city visual identity; Therefor studying theoretical and applied knowledge of successful examples in this field, can help them to move in the correct direction. Research Methodology of this study is descriptive, and in terms of data collection, information from authoritative databases centers, libraries and websites have been used. The author hopes that this research attracts the attention of Graphic designers to this issue.