Development of 'Seoul Infection Prevention Design' for Intuitive Communication of Infectious Disease Information... Designation of 'Representative Color for Infection Prevention'

Integrating Mixed Infection-Related Information for Standardization... Promoting Infection Prevention Behaviors to Enhance Everyday Crisis Response Ability

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Cheol-young] On the 13th, the Seoul Metropolitan Government announced that it has prepared the ‘Seoul Infection Prevention Design’ to enable citizens to easily and quickly recognize information, precautions, and action guidelines related to infectious diseases through eye-catching colors and simple pictograms.

Seoul designated the green (GY, Green Yellow) series as the ‘Seoul Infection Prevention Representative Color’ so that anyone can associate it with infection prevention. In addition, to help citizens easily recognize essential information about daily quarantine through design alone, 15 types of ‘Seoul Infection Prevention Pictograms’ were developed, including mask-wearing, QR check, and cough etiquette.

Seoul aims to alleviate vague anxiety about infectious diseases, raise awareness, and encourage citizens’ voluntary personal quarantine and infection prevention behaviors, thereby enhancing their ability to respond to everyday crises.

Seoul plans to pilot the newly developed ‘Seoul Infection Prevention Design’ at Seoul City Hall and the City Hall subway station, and produce and distribute a design manual so that it can be used in public and private facilities. For the pictograms, registration as national standards (KS) and international standards with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) will also be pursued. The ‘Seoul Infection Prevention Design’ consists of ▲Seoul Infection Prevention Representative Color ▲Seoul Infection Prevention Pictograms ▲Seoul Infection Prevention Design Manual.

Before the pilot application, Seoul created an ‘Infection Contact Prediction Map’ marking points such as elevator buttons, restroom handles, and ticket kiosks where citizens might feel infection anxiety or need to minimize hand contact, based on on-site user behavior surveys, and installed public facilities and public visual information accordingly. In particular, a separate ‘Hand Sanitizing Zone’ was established. Since hand sanitizing is a core quarantine rule but often goes unnoticed, the plan is to increase its usage.

Seoul has completed the application at the first-floor lobby of the Seoul City Hall main building (public office) and City Hall Station (subway station) and plans to expand it to public spaces in the future. The initiative will be proactively applied starting from subway stations. Seoul Metro, which operates subway lines 1 to 8, plans to apply the newly developed ‘Seoul Infection Prevention Design’ when installing or replacing infection prevention-related facilities or notices.

Joo Yong-tae, Head of the Seoul Metropolitan Government’s Culture Headquarters, said, “‘Seoul Infection Prevention Design’ is a design to enhance citizens’ daily crisis response capabilities by encouraging voluntary personal quarantine and infection prevention behaviors. We will operate it so that ‘Seoul Infection Prevention Design’ can establish itself as a new promise in the post-COVID-19 era that intuitively delivers information about infectious diseases to citizens. We will create a safe environment from infectious diseases.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.