Josh, I think you're on to something.  It could be tremendous.  Good luck!

 

Doug Franz

Coatesville Community Bike Works

---

From: "veganboyjosh@gmail.com" <veganboyjosh@gmail.com>
To: The Think Tank <thethinktank@bikecollectives.org>
Sent: Saturday, June 13, 2009 8:13:30 PM
Subject: Re: [TheThinkTank] Shop Signage

On Sat, Jun 13, 2009 at 3:42 PM, reno bikes <renobikeproject@gmail.com> wrote:
first,

you must teach people to read.

I've been fascinated by wordless novels lately, and their power to bring ideas to those who don't read letters or words, those who may read/speak another language, and even those who do read.

I've also been thinking of way was can bring this into our shop, to reach out to those visitors who can't read at all--this includes kids as well as adults--and those who speak other languages than our primary one.

Ikea (and other manufacturers of) furniture often include instructions for assembly with their products with wordless diagrams for sets of often pretty complex steps. The well done ones (Ikea comes to mind) work very well. Sometimes better than a bunch of text.

While I think the motivations behind mass production furniture manufacturers using wordless diagrams may not be as altruistic ("the fewer languages we have to print these instructions in, the lower our printing cost, etc") as our goals for our community bike shops, I do think there's some value we can find and use to our advantage, and to that of our clients and visitors, to make our spaces more welcoming.

I'm very interested in collaborating on a series of flyers or a zine or something which explains/diagrams the steps of the bike maintenance or assembly/disassembly that we most often find ourselves teaching in our shop, to allow for more self guided exploration of bike mechanics.

I didn't mean to hijack the thread about rules, but if there were a way to express the rules you're after with pictures instead of words, you would include even the folks who can't read, or can't read English, if that is the primary spoken/written language in your space. Wordless art has been in my brain a lot in the last few days, and reno's comment struck a chord.

josh.

On Sat, Jun 13, 2009 at 2:08 PM, Erik Stockmeier<eriks@therecyclery.org> wrote:
> Hi-
>
> The Recyclery is almost finished moving into our new storefront and making
> some nice signs to help people understand who we are and what we do (among
> other things).  I know we have all figured out much of this on our separate
> owns, but what kind of community shop-specific signs do we all have?  is
> there a collection of them somewhere?  I know the wiki is down...  But
> specifically I'm thinking about the many "we will not fix your bike for
> you..." type signs.  does anyone have any lists?
>

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