In collaboration between Nicholas McDonald, Jayden Panetta, and Nicholas Hodge.
The Brief: As part of a UTS partnership with Tricky Jigsaw and the Sydney Fish Market, Blend Week was a one week intensive to re-design the experience of the Sydney Fish Market, to highlight the journeys, stories and histories that start in the sea, travel through the market, and end at the plate.
Part of a collaborative multidisciplinary team, including Visual Communication Design, Integrated Product Design and Business we asked ourselves 'How might we get visitors to engage with the histories of Sydney Fish Market and recognise the value of local fishermen?'
To this end, we designed a wayfinding experience toolkit, that is flexible and scalable so that it can be developed in the existing space and transferred to the new upcoming Fish Market. By engaging tourists and day trippers with the stories, histories and journeys of the people behind the fresh produce in an experience that is driven by curiosity, storytelling and learning we hope that they become more connected, informed and appreciative about the icon that is the Sydney Fish Market.
An eye-catching entrance filled with schools of fish, designs inspired by local fish sizes, shapes and colours. A simple visual language built around bubbles and fish, the lifeblood of the Market and implemented through the use of floor stickers. Aspects like the Sydney Seafood School were taken into consideration to create an integrated experience that highlighted all aspects of the Market.
Prototyping was conducted on site in during the short time frame to gain excellent insight into traffic flows as well as engagement with different styles laying out the wayfinding pieces. We discovered from this process that clustering the fish around our information bubbles engaged people more often and increased traffic flow.
Extensive thought was put into how the experience might work in both the current Sydney Fish Market as well as the new one whose floorplan is much more open and spacious.
As this was only the beginning of a burgeoning toolkit, we thought of ways this could easily be expanded beyond the simple stickers into something that went above the ground into the air, or perhaps driven by characters, light, sound, VR/AR and into the surrounding spaces near the Sydney Fish Market - what if the wayfinding experience linked into the Darling Harbour, or started from the Light Rail?
Ultimately Ocean Odyssey is an idea about shifting the space from what is primarily a transactional space to a space that is also about the experience of discovering the many rich stories and histories of the Sydney Fish Market.