My experience of a Japanese Tea Ceremony plus research into the 'manners' for guests.
Character designs of a guest and a host who are male and female respectively and wear traditional Japanese clothing.
I have gone for an infographics style mixed with the ‘cuteness’ that is found in Japanese mascots.
Exploring Navigation
The layout of a traditional tea room has inspired the layout for my guide. Tea rooms are intimate spaces with a floor area no smaller than 4.5 tatami mats which I have translated into a set of 4 rectangle panels that can be read clockwise. I will need 4 sets in total for the guide's 16 steps. This layout isn't the easiest to read so I looked at ways to improve this, I went for the middle option above as the arrows in the space between panels is not as obtrusive as the other options. The centre square of each set of 4 panels will be numbered, although in Japanese, numbers 1-3 will be visually understandable to viewers of the guide.
Tea Ceremony: Guide for Guests (Wall Chart)
In this tile layout for the wall chart, all the panels appear immediately before your eyes and require little head movement. It also has the added benefit of being able to be printed on A3 paper and above.The panels have been given a ‘gold’ background inspired by Japanese ‘floating world’ images and the title is in a font that has hand written and brush like qualities.
Tea Ceremony: Guide for Guests - Leaflet
It is smart design to be able to reuse elements and the leaflet version shows us how we can get more out of an initial design through adaptation.
In my opinion the guide works best as a leaflet as the pages control the amount of information seen at any one time. 2 guides can be printed double sided on an A3 piece of paper making it economical. The way it is read will be instantly understood by viewers of the guide through the folding, pages can be turned and the whole thing can be folded out making the reading experience enjoyable.
The leaflet results in the creation of new pages so I designed a front and back cover showing the tea ceremony’s proper name in Japanese characters, its English pronunciation and translation. The middle pages are dedicated to understanding what the ‘Tea Ceremony’ is about and provides the location of a Japanese Shop where you can buy items to recreate the tea ceremony experience in London. It includes a map with the shop clearly marked and features useful information such as the address, contact details and opening hours. This page can change depending on the country the guide ends being in.
I can picture the wall chart being put up at tea houses for tourists with the leaflet accompanying it and being something that can be taken home as a souvenir. The leaflet has the potential of being printed in different languages and can be available at Japanese shops across the world as well as specialist tea shops to market green tea.
