Welcome to the Sign Design Society
The Sign Design Society (SDS) is for anyone interested in information and graphic communication within buildings and public spaces, including:
- Wayfinding
- Interpretative graphics
- Brand and experiential/environmental graphics
- Statutory and health & safety signs
As well as raising the profile of our disciplines, we offer members a programme of events, resources and initiatives to help them:
- Keep up to date and improve their practice
- Find potential consultants, collaborators & employees
- Promote their work and capabilities
To join choose a membership plan that suits you and sign up!
Our events
H2E studio co‑founder Ingūna Elere joins us for our July ’26 online seminar to demonstrate how clinical and structural constraints can be transformed into environments that are intuitive, emotionally supportive, and deeply human. An approach that is built on a three‑tier framework: Function, value and meaning. Ingūna uses two of H2E’s recently completed wayfinding schemes for the Latvian healthcare sector to illustrate this philosophy in action. She argues that environmental graphics and placemaking are not decorative, but essential therapeutic tools, turning complex buildings into spaces that are functional, meaningful, and emotionally restorative.
Discover what’s positive and exciting in the world right now for wayfinding and placemaking, from bold, people-first design to smart new tech.
Interested in a membership?
News
2nd edition Sign design guide now available to buy!
The new edition of the guide continues to provide practical guidance to experts and non-specialists alike, based on both best practice in inclusive design and the latest research.
Third party events
A design festival for people who use type. This two-day series of talks is the central event of the Typographics Festival, focused on the use of type across all design disciplines. Now in its eleventh year, this will be a hybrid conference.
A panel and performance exploring how community-led spaces sustain and celebrate belonging in London. Supported Cities presents an evening of conversation and celebration as part of LFA. This event brings together community organisers, artists, and leaders of grassroots spaces across London, from sports clubs to creative collective, we will explore how belonging is built and sustained in the city. The panel will reflect on themes of care, inconvenience, and the labour required to hold space for others. What does it take to create and maintain places where people truly feel they belong? The evening continues with a live musical performance response to belonging, offering a shared moment to reflect, connect, and celebrate community-led city-making. Part of the London Festival of Architecture 2026 Programme.
Michael Twyman’s family and the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication would like you to join us to share and remember the extraordinary breadth and reach of Michael’s research, teaching, leadership and friendship.
A look into non-linear type families and their conception, with Greg Gazdowicz.
In 2024, Tal Leming was tasked with designing a new cartographic typeface for the National Geographic Society. This new typeface needed to pair with Society’s long-serving cartographic typefaces. Not much was known about those typefaces, so he started digging into their origins and stumbled onto an amazing story of the Society quietly inventing a form of phototypesetting in the early 1930s. This discovery led to all sorts of concrete and abstract questions that affected the scope of the new typeface. Who designed those typefaces? Why do they look the way that they do? Am I making a new typeface or am I reviving a typeface? Am I even the designer of this new typeface? In this talk, Tal will lead us through the project and share the discoveries he made along the way.