WINNER
Design District Canteen – Feeding creativity
by Magpie Studio, for Design District
The Design District is a new neighbourhood on the Greenwich Peninsula built to be a long-lasting home for London’s creative industries. Within it is Design District Canteen, a market hall for the creatives themselves. Here they can eat, drink, relax and feel inspired in an unpretentious space.
Designed by Magpie Studio, Canteen offers street food, a well-stocked bar, and a space to socialise. Referencing the dayglow cards and offers traditionally found at market stalls, the Canteen brand is built around upbeat messaging and bold colour palettes. This extends to the wayfinding and signage in the space, which is composed of large colour-coded pictograms and a modular and fully updatable pegboard system. The latter cleverly compensates for future changes to the building and its contents, and ensures that it stands out against the built environment.
The judges said: “An outstanding entry that has mined the rich variety of creative material found in the culture of street food to produce a graphic and wayfinding identity that is wholly appropriate to the Design District.”
HIGHLY COMMENDED
Museum of the Home Wayfinding
by dn&co, for Museum of the Home
After undergoing radical redevelopment, the Geffrye Museum in London – now known as the Museum of the Home – needed a fresh brand identity and wayfinding system to help visitors navigate the new layout of the site. They approached creative studio Dn&co to oversee this process, reimagining the museum’s image and presence.
Aligning with the museum’s focal point, Dn&co created signage that draws on the history of domestic materials. Working with enamel, which was traditionally used to make mugs, milk pans and teapots, and oak, which is found commonly in homes around the world, the team developed a system that is clean, clear and eye-catching. The colour palette of the signage is a nod to the red brickwork of the almshouses that the museum resides within, while the raised effect of the typography, which uses the custom typeface Home Sans, evokes feelings of permanence and tactility. These elements come together to create a wayfinding system that is innovative in its choice of materiality, beautiful in its quality and highly effective in transforming the visitor experience.
Circus Street Signage
by SEA, for U+I
Built on the site of a derelict municipal market, Circus Street is a new creative quarter in Brighton comprising retail, residential and work spaces, and a new purpose-designed home for the South East Dance School. Designed by U+I, Circus Street has become a new 24-hour destination for creativity and innovation, and has managed to improve connectivity across the city.
At the heart of this is a thoughtful signage and wayfinding system that provides first-time visitors with easy navigational tools and a consistent visual journey across the six buildings that make up the quarter. Created by design studio SEA, it features bespoke typefaces and graphics that draw on the history of Brighton’s famous Lanes and more widely the city itself. A bright colour palette also references Brighton’s vibrant culture and draws attention to the bold and simplistic iconography and clean and accessible design.
Wordsworth Grasmere
by Nissen Richards Studio, for Wordsworth Trust
Wordsworth Grasmere, a museum located in England’s Lake District, is the former home of English Romantic poet William Wordsworth. Recently, Wordsworth Trust called upon Nissen Richards Studio to conserve and reinterpret Dove Cottage – the building in which Wordsworth once lived with his sister, Dorothy – and to design a new identity for the museum, including all gallery, exhibition design and interpretative overviews.
Grappling with such a complex site, Nissen Richards Studio needed to develop a suitably clear wayfinding system – accessibility, visibility and respect for the surroundings were central to this. Utilising locally-sourced Lakeland slate, in accordance with Wordsworth Trust’s desire to emphasise the museum’s connection to the local area, it created signage that is both highly legible and beautifully subtle. It incorporates a mix of text, maps and bespoke pictograms to appeal to both national and international visitors, and the natural tones and textures complement the Grade I listed building and the nearby hamlet of Town End in Grasmere where it is located.
Tump 53 placemaking
by Alphabetical, for Tump 53
Thamesmead in south-east London has more than double the amount of green space than the average area in the city. It is also home to Tump 53, an urban nature reserve rich with wildlife. Following the stresses of the pandemic, the owners of the reserve, Peabody, were keen for this space to be given special attention. They wanted to promote discovery and raise awareness of the health benefits provided by such reserves. To do this, they teamed up with London-based design agency Alphabetical.
The team at Alphabetical were tasked with developing an inspirational placemaking design that would engage the local community. As such, they chose to teach young people about the wildlife in Tump 53 through sound, movement and mark-making. They transformed the sounds and movements of the local animals into typographic installations around the space, showing visitors how these creatures inhabit their environment. These installations were then brought to life using a digital learning app that integrates AR design, making the experience both fun and informative and breaking down language barriers in the process.
Wayfinding and Environmental Graphics
shortlisted
