Project 2 Part I Visual Research

After visiting Redhill for the first time as written in the last post, I decided to think in depth on what are the unique features of Redhill and what kind of information i can add into the infographics. At first, during the group consultation, i just wanted to do an infographic to guide the residents in Redhill on the different places they can go to since Redhill is a place that is pretty small and clustered. Another idea I had in mind was to do a guide for people to exercise in Redhill since I observed that the residents are mostly all really fit looking and thus to encourage more people to work out and exercise, my infographic could be about a rough routine that people follow to stay fit!

Thus, after much consideration, i decided to go with the exercise routine since it is a pretty fresh topic to work on compared to the normal boring guide around Redhill where most people would actually already know about. There were a lot of considerations to take note before starting on my infographic cause i really have no idea how I want my infographic to be and how it should look like.

To have a clear idea on how I should start, I wanted my infographic to be simple and clear (straight to the point) and my target audience was residents living in Redhill. Then, i sieved out the “healthy” places that people can go to which were:
1) Delta Sports Complex (Swimming complex, gym, running track included)
2) Enabling Village (Gym, fitness corners, Fairprice)
3) Redhill Market
Which I further picked out healthy food that people can consider- Chicken Rice, Teochew Porridge, Fresh Fruits and juice.
4) Bukit Merah Central- where there is a pretty renowned salad store
5) Tiong Bahru Park

Following up, I decided to do a routine kinda thing where people can follow once the day start and how to end the day. However, at that point in time, i was still considering if i should do something like a timeline, a route that flows accordingly to the Redhill Map or like a morning, afternoon and evenings routine.

Some reference that was quite useful:

After that I decided on the title where people would not just throw the infographic away once they see it. I decided on: GET REDDY TO HEAL BY EXERCISING hahahha REDDY (RED) HEAL (HILL)= REDHILL!!!! i was quite proud of myself thinking of this pun heheh 😛

DIFFERENT PLACES THEY CAN HEAD TO IN THE ROUTINE:
Mornings-
Delta Sports Complex, Enabling Village, Swimming Complex

Afternoons-
They can eat at Redhill Market, Bukit Temah Central or simply just buy ingredients from Fairprice @Enabling Village to cook at home

Evenings-
Enabling Village
Tiong Bahru Park for a stroll
Sports Complex

Since there are only a few places they can go, i was actually quite scared that the places would turn out too repetitive in my infographic, thus it was important to add a balance of icons and words so that they won’t look like a copy and paste of details.

When i first started on the mornings: there were a lot of blank spaces everywhere and i didn’t know what image to put in. Then i decided to play with the sizes of the text to make it fill up the space instead of adding more pictures which may look very clustered and squeezy.

Oh yes, and for the colours wise, people who do not know what/where Redhill is, they would often associate it to Red, which is the distinct representation of Redhill, judging from the MRT station, the HDB flats which was the muddy red colour in the past and now it gradually fades to pinkish colour as more whites are added to the buildings. These are all from my observations which there are different shades of red involved in the buildings of Redhill.
Some examples would be the sports complex and the redhill market:

(Notice the flats behind have the shades of red too!)

The colour palette i decided to reference from in my infographic.

To sum things up, I wanted White to represent modernity hence the Red gets gradually lighter in my infographic and the pinkish tone is used at the end to represent how people are adapting to having a healthy lifestyle which then links to the idea of Pink of Health!

Also, I added a few facts here and there so that the target audience would know the benefits of exercising! Plus another pun(?) in the map i added at the bottom of my infographic for people to see Redhill as a big picture and know where are all the places!

YASSSS FINALLY after the wordy paragraphs on top, this is my final infographic!!

Pretty satisfied in general and I was really happy that there were many positive feedbacks! However, maybe it would be better if i could add more benefits to actually motivated the people reading this infographic to actually WANT TO exercise to stay fit. HAHAHAH although i assume most of them would already know since even the old people are so buff and strong 😛

I do not really have any idea on how to incorporate this into a zine yet but i’ll research more about it and post it in the next post. 🙂

Thanks for reading!

For the second project, we were given a neighbourhood to explore and find out interesting areas in the specific place. The neighbourhood i got was Redhill. I was just glad that it is still on the green line and it’s not that far from school.

So, of course before heading down to Redhill to explore, i did some research about the place and where to go. Redhill isn’t really a place with unique places of interest but it has a history? We all do have some memory of hearing how the name Redhill came about when we were younger.

The legend basically started a long time ago when Singapore was merely a little sleepy fishing village. To cut the long story short, in these early years, the fishes that had sharp, sword like mouths used to swim up to the shore and attack fishermen, making it unable for them to venture out and fish. Nobody had any idea what to do then.
So one day, a young boy, who lived on the hill came up with a solution. He advised the Sultan to use banana tree trunks as a wall to ward off the attacks, as the fishes mouth would get stuck in the tree and they can kill the fish more easily. This plan worked very well, and the fish eventually stopped attacking.
However, the boy became a hero in the eyes of the villages and the Sultan became to be threatened by him, growing paranoid that the villagers might want this young boy to become the next ruler and overthrow him. His paranoia increased day by day, until one day, he ordered a small squad of his elite guards to assassinate the boy in his sleep. That night, the head of the this team took out his kris (wavy blade dagger) and stabbed the boy in the heart. Killing him instantly.
The blood that flowed out would not stop gushing out of the wound, and the young boy’s blood coated the hill that he lived. None of the villagers knew who ordered the boy kill, but that it was a tragic event, and to commemorate this event, they called the hill Bukit Merah (Red Hill) to remember this boy.

There are many versions of the legend but this is the one i remembered and read on the internet!

Then i searched for places to go in Redhill and found some places:
-Redhill Market
-Enabling Village
-Delta Sports Complex

So on Thursday, Huimin and I went to explore each of our places together since it was just a few stops away 🙂 Immediately after we stepped out of the Redhill MRT station, we were greeted by super high HDB Flats! Its actually very cool to me because i live in Pasir Ris and the highest flats i see if probably less than 15 storeys. These flats here are at least 30 floors high!!

We decided to walk to a direction for less than 5minutes after the MRT station… and we ended up heading to Alexander Road (Queenstown) and Tang Lin Road (Orchard???) LOL, Redhill is really very small actually. It is like once you walk towards a certain direction for a while, you will not be in Redhill itself anymore HAHAHAHAH

This stretch of road has many buildings of different car brands.

A temple we walked pass while heading to the other direction instead of Tang Lin Road.

Still pretty impressed how tall these buildings are! 😛

Manage to go to one of the old HDBs there which has many little shops at the first level. These flats are mostly 2-3 Room flats as the doors of the houses are so close to one another!

If you look closer, you can see each unit is very near to one another

Towards Enabling Village. The roads are actually quite hilly (cause redHILLLL hahah) but honestly there are a lot of slopes and curve in the small roads.

This place reminds me of a community club but it is actually a place that have a long history in education and training, having formerly been the Bukit Merah Vocational Institute and the Employment and Employability Institute. The site has been extensively retrofitted for easy access by visitors who have disabilities.

Cute wall arts.

A kindergarten

They have many gyms and fitness corners as well in this “Village” which is really interesting compared to other community clubs. Then, we realised that almost all places in Redhill are accessible to gyms and other forms of exercise. We even saw a super muscular and fit old man walking around. Thus we concluded that the people living in Redhill do have an active lifestyle HAHAHAHA.

Next Stop: REDHILL MARKET

It feel abit like Bedok Market to me and the food at the hawker is probably pretty good but we didn’t try them hahaha

Delta Sports Complex which we didn’t go in to explore due to lack of time

Pretty pastel coloured flats which was so pretty!! This was actually the end of redhill and we were on the way to Tiong Bahru since its really near redhill i decided to explore abit on tiong bahru too! (Told ya redhill is pretty small)