The 'C' System

The 'C' System is a clothing swing tag for visually impaired people that identifies colour, size and price. It was designed and developed by Jade Aloof and Coley Porter Bell design agency. It won the 2002 Design Business Association (DBA) Design Challenge.

Aloof discovered initially that generallt visually impaired people still retained a colour memory, so they did not need to be described what a colour looked like and the emotions that they envoked, as was her initial idea. Instead a more useful tool was to be told what colour the clothes they were choosing were. As only 4% of visually impaired people read braile, the challenge became to design a tactile colour-coding system for use on clothing swing tickets.

A clear and memorable system was required, so Aloof edited the colour palet to 16 core colours, and gave each a shape. The shape would be presented as a raised keyline, and within each of the solid four shapes there would again be a raised keyline. Each shape os broken down into 4 increments representing more or less saturation - so an outer keyline square means blue. If the solid raised area inside is a full square it is a dark or midnight blue, if it is only a quarter it is a pale or baby blue. Clearer still, if the inside area is ribbed, it gives an indication that it is a patterened garment. She went on to add six dots to indicate small to extra large sizing, and later the more complex instructions of washing and pricing.

Following from this, Aloof countered the problem of not being able to identify the clothes once the tags had been taken off. She developed a soft-silk label with the information of colour sewn onto it.

The RNIB is currently trying to promote the scheme and get it implemented in clothes around Britain and Europe.

I think that this is a brilliant idea and cannot quite believe that the idea has not been implemented into the labels of clothing. It would be so much more helpful for the blind person to be able to go about the task of dressing themselves without the aid of someone else telling them whether they look good or not. This is an idea that i personally would like to address in my own brief. Changing something so small, but making a huge impact on the lives of other people. Currently im not sure what this would be.... so any ideas?