Redesigning a boarding pass

For this week’s project, I challenged myself to redesign the following boarding pass from Delta:

The first thing I noticed about this design was how convoluted it was. The text is very clustered and hard to read. The gate information is almost hidden as it blends in with the monotony of the rest of the text despite being one of the most important pieces of information that a passenger needs to know. I also was uncomfortable with the amount of repetitive information that is included on both sides of the boarding pass. I knew immediately that I wanted to incorporate color and icons as part of the redesign to enhance user readability. Using Adobe Photoshop, I created the design below.

My new design encompasses the colors of DELTA Airlines: red, blue, and white. I tried to imitate the aesthetic on DELTA’s website (image below) which encompasses san serf typefaces and sharp, crisp lines. The font shown in this screenshot of their website is Today SB Light by Scangraphic Digital Type Collection. Since this font is not free to download, I settled for a similar typeface called Myriad Pro that is freely available within Adobe Photoshop. All of the text in my design is written in this typeface. I altered the weight and size of the text to add variability to the design.

Images can convey messages with more clarity than words and quickly capture the attention of readers. With the exception of DELTA and SKYTEAM logos, I used 4 icons from The Noun Project.

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I placed the information that I believe is most important to a passenger within a red box. This information includes boarding time, gate number, and the passenger’s seat on the plane.

One of the biggest difficulties I faced while doing this project is determining what would be the best placement for the text “*SUBJECT TO CHANGE*. I wanted it to be subtle, yet readable. I debated whether I should place it horizontally or vertically around the red box, but ultimately went with the text organized horizontally below the box.

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For the second component of this week’s assignment, the task was to create three expressive word designs. This entails creating a design using a word’s letterforms to illustrate the meaning of that word. The words I chose to explore were squeeze, x-ray, and lightning. I really appreciate designs that are minimalistic and subtle, yet intentional. Therefore, I kept these concepts in mind while brainstorming how to create my expressive words.

For the word “squeeze”, I manipulated the word sizes to create an effect that someone was squishing the letters from the left side. I used the typeface NoteWorthy from Adobe Photoshop since each letter embodies a curved, asymmetrical shape.

For the word “X-Ray”, I used the typeface Phosphate from Adobe Photoshop since each letter contains an inline version of each letter. It is simple , yet powerful enough to mimic the effect that you are viewing the skeleton of each letter.

For the word “X-Ray”, I used the typeface Silom from Adobe Photoshop since each letter contains sharp, crisp lines, and box-like ends. I replaced the letter “i” with a lightning bolt because most people usually associate lightening with bolts and thunder. I was originally going to organize the letters over one another so that it looked like a lightning bolt, but I felt the shape was not as apparent as I would have liked so I disregarded that design.