Getting Around

Bus tickets are one of most commonly used products. Everyday people use public transport to travel to work/university/school. Usually in hurry, people using the ticket must be able to see all important information embedded on it very quickly.

This First bus ticket, nonetheless, does not help with that. It looks very messy, confusing and not very accessible. The ticket looks like a collage. Every part of t is different. Furthermore, the text does not show the hierarchy properly, therefore making the ticket hard to read.
The most important information,the expiry date, is very thin, and its grey on orange background, making it very unclear. The watermark is, surprisingly, bigger than the date.
The words 'student' '4 weekly' and 'zones 1-2' are very small and bulky, clumped together, with inconsistent leading, what makes it very illegible.
Information about the card holder is very big, taking away too much space, which should be wisely used to
enhance the expiry date.
In addition, the words indicating the type of ticket holder (e.g. young person/student, for example) is written twice, as well as shown by the colour of the ticket, which is very unnecessary.

The fonts used are very simple sans serifs, what, if used wisely, makes them very easy to read. They remind me of modern sans serif fonts used in transport, like Johnston, Akzidenz Grotesk, Univers or Helvetica.


The current design of the ticket is not very good. While redesigning it, a question should be answered:

Who the users of us ticket are? - People owning them and bus drivers. You might think then, that the hierarchy of information should be different for both - that's not true. People using the ticket want to see when is it valid untill, so they do not miss the day then need to purchase a new one. Therefore, the most important and probably the only information being used by them is the 'valid untill' date.
The bus drivers, must see the exact same information first, to be able to establish if a person should be allowed on a bus. The second important information is zones the ticket is paid for. Those two information should be very clear and easy to read.
The bus driver must also recognise if the ticket was issued for an adult, student or a young person. This information should be visible, though can be much lower in a hierarchy, and it's indicated by the written word, as well as colour of the card.

To avoid coggery, the part of a ticket which changes every month (the sticker), must have a card no. and a watermark. This information is not checked too frequently though, as the bus drivers are usually in rush, therefore it can be smaller.

The card no. sitting on the actual ticket and card holder information can be considered to be at the bottom of the hierarchy. Since it's the least important part, used most commonly, I believe, if the card is lost, it can be small and neatly put into a corner of a ticket.

Considering all of that, I created a new design.