ABG DESIGN
Project Name: National Army Museum signage and wayfinding
Client: National Army Museum, London
Sector: Museums and heritage
Location: Chelsea, London (UK)
Role: ABG Design won a competitive tender for the signage and wayfinding for the newly architected National Army Museum. The new museum and extension was carried out by BDP. The new museum was much larger and needed a total new signage and mapping scheme put in place.
The Brief: To create a signage and wayfinding strategy that aided the visitor experience and clearly identified what exhibitions were on each floor, the signage worked in conjunction with the new guides also designed by ABG Design. The new spaces were far more open and contemporary, and this needed to be reflected in the new signage scheme.
Outcome: As the building was extended and further floors added, it was imperative that the visitor could easily navigate each of the floors with ease. So ABG Design designed a 3D set of floor plans that easily showed all master stairwells and lift access points. They also generated a range of simple new pictograms that easily identified all key new areas of the museum such archive, learning spaces and a new café.
ABG Design decided to colour code each floor with a range of army inspired colours such as bronzes, coppers and silvers. These were repeated on each of the floor levels, so they worked really well with the map. A sense of subtle humour was added to some of the pictograms, for example the toilet signs depicted people doing a military salute.
Howard Miles, ABG Design Managing Director said: “We are really pleased with the outcome of this project. It’s a wonderful new building and museum and deserved a suite of signage that matched its new quality. The production and installation were tightly managed by ABG Design to ensure only the best quality signs were installed.”
Case Study Submitted by ABG Design, Howard Miles (hmiles@abgdesign.uk.com).
For further information visit the ABG Design website.
