△
Bristol Museum & Art Gallery — Wayfinding & Signage
We were commissioned by Bristol Museum & Art Gallery to design the wayfinding and signage for their historic Edwardian building.
The signage takes the form of elegant, painted timber, leaning panels that have minimum impact on the listed building stonework and provide a contemporary, but sensitive, new layer in the Edwardian interior.
The museum has a complex layout, with split levels on the upper floors. To improve understanding of this, we introduced wording such as ‘up to’ and ‘through to’, creating an intuitive flow through the building and avoiding complex level numbering such as 1st upper, 1st lower etc. An overview of the building layout is provided on large leaning directory panels in prominent positions on each floor and threshold panels create clear navigation through the individual galleries.
Other furniture items were designed as part of the signage family, including an information desk, leaflet display rack and marketing display panels.
△
Stanton Williams — Identity
Stanton Williams are an established, international architectural practice. Their core philosophy is ‘to inspire users through their experience of space, light and materials’. The practice has evolved over a 25 year period and we were commissioned to redesign their identity to reflect their current position and ethos.
With every project we take time to engage with our clients and gain an understanding of their working methods and underlying principles. After numerous conversations with the directors and partners we gained an invaluable insight into the practice.
Key concepts became apparent – ‘pushing and pulling volume’, ‘the beauty of raw, natural materials’ and a ‘rigorous attention to detail’. It was clear that a new, bold, confident language was emerging in Stanton William’s recent work and their desire was for the identity to reflect this shift.
Our solution was to create an elegant, structural logotype that hints at simple, constructed interlocking forms. The position of the common letter ‘A’ in both names dictates the alignment. Across the stationery this logotype is either pushed-into or removed-from carefully chosen, tactile materials such as 100% cotton paper and raw board, while rigorous typographic templates unify the extensive range of architectural documentation.
Externally, the logotype at the office entrance is water-cut through stainless steel.
△
Design Museum — Brit Insurance Designs of the Year 2010
The Brit Insurance Designs of the Year is the Design Museum’s annual awards event. An exhibition showcases approximately one hundred of the most innovative and forward thinking designs from around the world. An event at the Design Museum is held to announce the winner.
We designed the exhibition for the 2010 awards. Rather than design disciplines such as Architecture, Fashion, Graphics etc, the exhibition is curated by a series of seven conceptual themes such as Everyday Design, Cultural Heritage and Communication.
Our concept was to create a coherent, unobtrusive display to contain the eclectic mix of exhibits, ranging in scale from a car to a household plug. To achieve this, we designed a continuous, fluid ribbon that could rise and fall to create spaces and surfaces for the exhibits and create discrete zones for each theme. Each display ribbon uncoils from one of the gallery’s columns which are painted in bright colours with bold, graphic words to act as beacons indicating the start of each theme. A simple family of clear acrylic label holders integrate with the table tops and indicate the design disciplines, the category winners and the overall winner.
We also carried the graphic language from the exhibition through to the related awards material including the catalogue.
A firm favourite amoungst many a designer, Cartlidge Levene have updated their portfolio with some brand new work which once again reaffirms their position as one of London’s finest studios. This is clean, considered work at its best and because this is SeptemberIndustry you, dear reader, get all of this goodness in high resolution. ;)
One more thing, if there’s any studio out there that can make some of the most commonly used typefaces in design look fresh and inspiring, it’s CL. That is all ;)
Big thank you once again to all the fine folk at Cartlidge Levene for their generosity and of course to Melissa for making this feature happen. :)
All photography by Mr. Marcus Ginns
If you’re new here, don’t forget to Subscribe, FFFFOUND! & follow SI on Twitter for your weekly dose of visual crack. ;)
This post is tagged Cartlidge Levene, Identity, Signage, Stationery, Wayfinding
7 Comments