Environmental Graphics – Merging Design and Space

Environmental graphic design (EGD) is a way to tell your company’s story and immerse visitors in a brand experience. Using various materials, images, colors, and patterns, EGD aligns with architectural features to communicate your brand message or create an experience.

EGD can be printed and flat — like this wall wrap that inspires employees with their company history. Or it can be three-dimensional and immersive — such as this public art installation.

Wayfinding Systems

Wayfinding systems can be used in various ways to help visitors navigate your business or organization. They can be a combination of signs and other graphic elements that tell a story about your business, its culture, and the people who work there.

When choosing a wayfinding design solution, it’s important to consider the unique perspectives of your audience. This will help you to create more meaningful, effective graphics that can be understood and remembered. To achieve this, you will want to ensure that all aspects of your visual system meet communication goals and that each element is clearly legible. You will also want to consider the context of your location and the needs of your visitors when designing your wayfinding system.

Branded environments are one of the most common uses of environmental graphics. This is because they can be a great way to communicate your brand story and values to customers and employees. They can include imagery, color, and typography that align with your brand identity to help you establish a consistent visual identity across your business or organization.

Theme parks, sports arenas, universities, and businesses often use branded environments to promote their brands or to celebrate team or student accomplishments. This type of environment can generate excitement and inspiration in your customers and employees as they walk through your space. It’s also a great way to show off your company or organization’s pride and culture.

Lastly, theme parks and other tourist attractions often use environmental graphics to convey safety messages to their visitors. This is an important aspect of wayfinding because it can prevent accidents and injuries in your business or organization’s spaces. Having safety messages in your environment can help you to build trust and confidence with your customers or visitors.

When it comes to implementing wayfinding and other types of environmental graphics, it’s important to choose a designer or design agency with experience in this area. You can find a qualified designer by asking for recommendations, searching online, or reviewing their portfolios. When looking at portfolios, make sure you examine their past projects to see whether they are similar to yours in size, scope, and complexity. You’ll also want to ensure that the designer or design agency has the skills and resources to complete your project on time and on budget.

Interactive Media

A space’s visual elements communicate directly and indirectly, and how people experience a brand’s space is heavily influenced by how it’s designed. Environmental graphic design (EGD) uses multiple disciplines like interior, landscape, architectural, and industrial design to create a complete experience within a physical space. EGD includes a variety of techniques, ranging from directional signage to two-dimensional walls, ceiling and floor applications that transform a space. These elements can be used to share a story, set a mood, provide instructions, encourage an emotional response, or even support a public art installation.

Despite their sometimes confusing and overlapping definitions, these design disciplines all focus on the same thing: communicating information or creating an experience within a physical space. This is what makes EGD so powerful. When done right, it can be a key piece in brand identity and placemaking, helping to reinforce the client’s business goals with a unique and tangible form.

At banks and credit unions, environmental graphics help inform, captivate, and delight customers uniquely. Kevin Brouillette, senior environmental graphic designer at NewGround, a branch design firm, says this type of design is an increasingly popular choice for branches looking to make a modern impression.

For example, he recently helped a credit union design an interactive display that teaches employees about the company’s sustainable farming practices. The display combines educational data with visual representations to teach employees how the company’s sustainability practices positively impact their community and the environment.

The display also provides a fun, interactive way for employees to learn more about the company and its mission. It features a chalkboard surface where employees can draw, sketch, and collaborate with one another. This multifunctional graphic helps to inspire employees’ creativity and allows them to engage with the brand in a different way than they normally would during an internal meeting or working lunch.

This type of environmental graphic can also be used to establish a presence for temporary or pop-up spaces. Coordinated signs and color schemes can help to bring attention to brand activations or new spaces and make them more memorable (and worthy of a post on social media). These types of creative and engaging environmental graphic designs are a great way for brands to express their personalities and deliver a positive customer experience.

Placemaking

One of the most common misconceptions about environmental graphic design (EGD) is that it is merely aesthetic. While EGD does improve a space’s visual appeal, it can also create an overall sense of place and identity for users in that space. This can be done by infusing directional cues into the fabric of an environment. For example, directional arrows can be integrated into floors and walls to help visitors navigate throughout a space.

Branded environments are the primary physical spaces where customers and employees interact on a day-to-day basis. These spaces come to life through EGD with portrayals of the company’s values and culture. This gives the audience a clear understanding of who the company is and what it stands for from the moment they walk through the door.

EGD can also create a feeling of surprise for the viewer. This can be accomplished by using unexpected materials or shapes to adorn a room or building. For instance, the pig and beef farming exhibit pictured below uses environmental graphics to entertain and educate visitors on how meat is produced. It is a fun and unique way to showcase an otherwise boring subject.

In addition to wayfinding, branding, and entertainment, environmental graphics can also be used to promote a specific company or product. This can be especially important for banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions in their branch locations. Using environmental graphics to highlight a product’s or service’s benefits can help attract potential customers and clients.

With its many applications and benefits, it is easy to see why the field of EGD has become so popular in recent years. It is important for any business to understand how to utilize the many elements of this discipline. This will allow them to make their spaces more appealing, functional, and enjoyable for their employees and customers. To learn more about how your business can incorporate EGD into its spaces, contact a design firm that specializes in this field. They can explain the different types of EGD and how they can be used to achieve your desired results.