Zane Hunker

1\\ Helvetia 

2\\ The Great Advance

3\\ Yabun 

4\\ New Transport Pictograms 

5\\ Divestack 

6\\ Eyerrow 

7\\ General Transport 

8\\ Zane's Drawings

High upon a wooded mountainside sits Helvetia, a Swiss modern themed lodge accessible by the aerial tramway depicted in its logo. 20 to 35 year old middle income guests arrive by tramway to a world of tranquility and relaxation. Young adults can appreciate viewing nature in an idyllic way in contrast to their increasingly complicated lives. This simple, relaxed view lends itself well to an aesthetically clean Swiss Style. Large panoramic windows beautifully frame free flowing natural scenery. Helvetica is the natural type choice. Solid fields of red or white adorn branded items including the tramway cars and stationery. The logo is colored opposite of the field upon which it’s placed and is shown separate from the logotype on the branded items within the hotel.

Greatly inspired by and named after a piece of instrumental music by Francis Monkman, The Great Advance is a complete, consistent and efficient aesthetic for a future society where people of all ages and means are welcomed. When undertaking such a project one might first think about what aspects of life couldn’t be represented by a single kind of efficient design. Creativity and subjective choice shouldn’t be defined by efficiency. Who are we to define the single most efficient kind of food, music or art? Most subjects related to engineering are defined by efficiency and would greatly benefit aesthetically from an efficient, consistent design. I reached this objective by dividing the project into just 3 categories; Transportation: vehicles, Community: structures, and Activity: every other mechanized aspect of life. Each of these categories became a book which contains a set of 5 objects that are all individually illustrated through an environmental spread followed by a technical spread. The last 2 spreads of each book contain all of the 5 objects illustrated as a group. The first of these 2 spreads illustrates the objects in single colored thin outlines while the second and final spread illustrates these objects in full color. Black, white, light orange, light blue and a light grey were the 5 colors I used. The complete 2 weight Zanector typeface family used for all of the copy in this project is my creation as well.

With an arid climate, red dirt, sparse vegetation and scattered eucalyptus trees, the area of Valley Center in northeastern San Diego County distinctly resembles the Australian Outback. An Australian boutique hotel called Yabün was created to utilize the look and feel of this environment to great effect. Beyond nurturing an interest in Australian Aboriginal cultural, this environment elicits a laid back attitude that feels so refreshing to educated middle and upper income 35 to 50 year old couples that want to get away from the city every once in a while and bring the kids along to share some quality time together. The peaceful meandering hills, twisting canyons and wide open sky feed the soul with lasting memories. An aboriginal inspired pattern of light brown, light orange and dark red dots and circles adorns branded items including a back pack, water bottle, pencil, notebook and stationery. The logotype and signage consists of a modified Arial Rounded. All other type is set unaltered in the Arial family.

Pictogram systems have been created mainly to help guide people of any language through specific environments like parks, roads and many public facilities. Consistency of pictograms only extends to within the system in which they were designed. As predominant as transportation is within many of these different systems, its consistency as a most basic universal aspect of life is lost amid designs aimed at other priorities. New Transport Pictograms is meant to universally communicate how universal transportation is. I’ve determined that transportation can be easily categorized 5 ways; Personal/Human Powered: dark green, Vertical/Short Length: light orange, Land: light brown, Air: light blue, and Water: dark blue. All of the pictograms are black with a white background and placed over the color of their respective categories. When stacked, the 5 vehicles in each of the 5 categories create a tidy square configuration of all 25 vehicles in the system. This complete configuration is shown on the light grey front and back covers the book that I created to illustrate the system as well as to assess how certain environmental mediums on planet earth have created the need for each of the 5 categories of vehicles. Many of these simple designs share components with their siblings throughout the system reinforcing how similar these machines really are. The Helvetica type family is used to communicate the objective and universal nature of my categories and assessments.

A diverging diamond interchange is a relatively new and more efficient variation of the typical diamond interchange. A stack interchange is often used on intersections between freeways. While able to handle high traffic loads, a stack interchange is expensive and land-intensive to build. A Divestack interchange combines the efficient attributes of a diverging diamond interchange with the grade separated high traffic capacity of a stack interchange. Along with designing the interchange itself I created a logo and promotional booklet targeted to transportation departments. Grey, white and the shade of green closest to that of freeway signs are the colors used in this project. Highway Gothic as the type choice is a clear homage to road signage.

The synthesis of an eye and an arrow have inspired the creation of Eyerrow, a website and app that aims to alleviate confusion, stress and fear from travel and travel planning. Intended primarily for ages 15 to 35, Eyerrow would also be also useful to the general public for a trip across town or a trip across the globe. Departure and arrival times and locations along with many other kinds of information about the modes of transportation available for the trip will be easily accessible to users. One of many potential features could be how the logo displayed at major stations and intersections will indicate to users that region-specific transportation information is automatically available to them on their devices in and around that location. Black on white is used for the search and navigation functions of the site along with the logo when encompassing the entire brand. All of the different modes of transportation represented are color-coded; Air: light blue, Rail: red, Bus: purple, Taxi: light orange, Car: grey, Bike: green, Walk: magenta, and Boat: dark blue. The Helvetica type family is used for its simplicity and web compatibility.

General Transport was born from the bold, idealistic and altruistic side of my mind as a teenager mired in the struggle against the isolating, oppressing and condescending surroundings of special education. At those trying times of my life, my freedom to draw every kind of vehicle under the guiding principles of stylish, efficient and affordable design was my only freedom. Upon completion, the entire system of hand drawings contained 57 individual vehicles spread between 11 categories; Cars: pedestrian and passenger vehicles, Trucks: trucks and towing vehicles, Vertical Transport: elevators, escalators and moving walkways, Tramways: aerial tramways, Trains: trains and monorails, Passenger Ships: passenger and large container ships, Freight Ships: an ice breaker, barges and small container ships, Airplanes, Helicopters, Off-Road Vehicles: off-road and exploration vehicles, and finally, Spacecraft. Later on I gained the skill and patience to competently vectorize the entire system with minor cosmetic and technical improvements. True to the original hand colored drawings, a white and orange color scheme adorns the vast majority of the vehicles. A new component of the brand is the complete 2 weight custom type family appropriately named General Transport which is used in the logo, logotype and model numbers. From the very beginning I had envisioned this company to build every kind of vehicle for every kind of person. One day I hope to see this vision become the model for public policy created to protect and grow a global economy engineered to serve all of humanity. The survival of humanity depends on our ability to unite our interests, talents and determination.

Throughout my life I have pursued my interest in vehicles and structures through many different channels such as studying books, building toy models, and designing my own versions of regular objects. I’ve also enjoyed drawing concepts that exist only as theories and experiments or that don’t yet exist in a particular form outside of my imagination. At times I would ask myself why certain things like flying cars, hanging monorails or modular high rise buildings haven’t yet become common in our world. I’ve learned that perception can be a bigger hurdle than engineering. Unimaginative perception creates the resistance which robs our society of progress. I base my perception on the freedom to cast aside skepticism and dream big.