The following project is a purely fictional concept of a non-existing Groningen underground transportation system. The work has no connection with government-based or any legal bodies, neither is a suggestion of what should happen or what would make sense. It is a statement about my visual choices and my rebellion towards design, coated into the imagined future of Groningen city. The intention of the project is to demonstrate a complex design system and a visual language with all its assets.
Designing an entire public transport network requires both geographical and societal knowledge, furthermore precise measurements and strict visual and typographical rules. The four metrolines share one joint identity, told apart only through their uniquy vivid, rebellious tones. The bold bouquet of colors serve as a statement of being the happiness in commuters’ daily life, while ensuring about shades that are fairly distinguishable for colorblind people. The project started with establishing a design guide which declares typography rules, color associations, icon sets and guidance for the different graphic assets.
Groningen is a bike and pedestrian oriented city with only a few buslines that generally lack connections, making the travel time from one outskirting area to another often very long and tedious. To maintain and further reduce the traffic, building an underground system provides accessible public transport between neighborhoods, central areas and often visited facilities in the matter of minutes.
Part of the concept is a simple, user-friendly mobile app. The app allows the user to follow a certain line to see its current location and ensure about not missing a station when on the vehicle. The Metroningen app focuses on route planning and departure times rather than wayfinding but there is a button that navigates to the device’s default map application with stations already marked.
With customizable widgets, which can be placed even on the lock screen of a device, it is also possible to pin favorite routes to the user’s screen with real-time departure times, or track their journey without opening the app.
The concept of making any of this fiction coming alive is as surreal and departed from practicality as the promotion material that it demanded. The new metro system changes everything about the daily life in Groningen, the entire spirit of the city can shift in result of the transportation habit changes, and that deserves recognition, pride and loudness. As a quick and short launch campaign, any point of the city, which has connection to the metro system, will be packed with urban promotional materials, advising to change your current commute and take the metro.
