§ S.04 Service All services
Signage design
The brief isn’t to design a sign: it’s to write the standard that lets any body make consistent signs for decades, with accessibility and a fit with the place built in.
What it solves
Every space that receives people accumulates signs: the one the council put up, the one the maintenance company added, the one someone printed in a hurry. Each with its own lettering, colour and height. The visitor can’t find what they’re looking for, the institution loses authority and the place — be it a park or a lobby — loses character.
A wayfinding programme sorts that out once and for all: it decides what needs signing and what doesn’t, how each thing is named, how it reads at the distance it will be read from, and what it’s made of so it ages well and can be replaced in ten years looking the same.
How I approach it
I start by walking the place and taking stock of what’s there, what’s missing and what’s surplus. Then I define the family of signs — welcome, orientation, interpretation, regulatory — and resolve them in one language: type legible at a distance, a field of colour that reads under any light and a family of pictograms drawn with the same stroke weight.
The choice of materials is part of the design, not an afterthought. For the Natural Parks of the Valencian Community it was solid timber and steel: two materials that age well and that the park itself can replace. The manual fixes types, dimensions, heights, reading distances and construction details, so whoever makes sign number two hundred makes it like the first.
§ S.04.1 What it includes
- Site walk, inventory and diagnosis of the existing signage
- Sign programme: what, where and for whom
- Naming and writing criteria, in one or several languages
- Own or adapted family of pictograms
- Typography, colour and layout by reading distance
- Supports, materials, finishes and fixing systems
- Accessibility criteria: contrast, height, relief or braille where appropriate
- Signage manual with construction drawings for fabrication and installation
- Prototypes and supervision of the first units
Public and natural spaces
Park networks, trails, interpretation centres, municipal facilities. Programmes that have to last, that different suppliers will fabricate over the years, and that must blend into the landscape rather than compete with it. Here the manual is the main deliverable: the standard is worth more than any single sign.
Shops, offices and buildings
In a private space, signage is one more application of the corporate identity: a shop’s section sign, an office directory, the sign on a warehouse. At La Barraca de maría, the hanging signs in the aisles come from the same system as the emblem on the façade and the jar sticker. When the brand is well built, signing is tidying; when it isn’t, signing exposes it.
§ S.04.2 All projects
§ S.04.3 Frequently asked questions
Do you design the signs or make them too?
I design the programme and the manual, and I support fabrication: I prepare production files, review prototypes and supervise the first units. Fabrication and installation are done by a sign-making or metalwork workshop — yours, or one I help you choose.
What’s the difference between signage and wayfinding?
In practice they’re used interchangeably. Strictly, signage is the set of signs in a place, and wayfinding design is the discipline that designs them as a system: naming, pictograms, typography, supports and standard. What I do is the second, and what I deliver is the first.
Do you take accessibility into account?
Always. Sufficient contrast, letter sizes calculated for the real reading distance, mounting heights, standardised pictograms where a convention exists and, where the space demands it, relief and braille. And signing less and better: the surplus sign is a barrier too.
Does it work for public tenders?
Yes. The signage manual is written as a technical document, with dimensions, materials and construction drawings, so it can be incorporated into a tender specification or serve as the basis for different contractors to fabricate identically over the years.