Typography in environmental design, including
signage programs and exhibition graphics, presents
a set of challenges unlike those in any other kind of
project. Moving ideas from the sketch phase to the
actual built space requires skill and imagination.
The main reason for this is that the design will be
delivered in a medium and at a scale vastly different
from the computer screen. These projects demand
that the designer be able to visualize the environment
and experience it as the viewer will, in order
to verify that their type and other design choices
will work as intended. It takes practice to get the
typography right—8 point looks very different from
8-foot-tall letterforms!
Visualizing the work
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
graphic designer Paul Wehby says, “It’s hard for
most people to visualize scale. There is a gap in their
expectations—they read the blueprints, but when
the piece is installed, it can seem very different.”
It is expensive to manufacture and install graphics
in environments, so clients expect designers to do
it right the first time. Redoing signs, especially largescale
public ones, is often impossible because of both
budget and time constraints.
To ensure proper results, some designers get test
proofs made of a portion of their design, while others
resort to piles of printouts tiled together. Some
designers create 3D computer-generated models
of the spaces they are designing to help them previsualize
their designs. Jan Lorenc, creative director
of Atlanta-based environmental graphic design firm
Lorenc + Yoo, says, “The physical model is the best
way to see the space, since you can walk through it
in your mind at your own pace without technology
hindering your participation.” All of these methods
provide an approximation of what the graphics will
look like, but there is no substitution for the ability
to think spatially that comes with experience.
Getting it built
The installation process is key to the success of
any environmental concept. Designers need a good
fabricator to interpret their design and render it at
scale. Type modification is typically done by the
fabricator, not the designer. Inventor and exhibition
designer Roy Alexander, whose firm Alexander
Design is based in Chicago, comments, “Most of
my designs have been produced by firms referred to
as exhibit houses. My designing has been done on
paper to be scaled up by the producer. Large work
has structural requirements which are partially
resolved by me and my staff, but the builder, with
responsibility for safety, may or may not make alterations
related to safety or cost.” Wehby echoes the
importance of great collaborators, calling his team
“highly skilled and very detailed craftsmen.”
Sweating the details
While broader issues such as context—location and
size of the space, type of lighting and manufacturing
materials to be utilized, and, obviously, the intended
use and purpose of the work—all play an essential
role in environmental design, the details of design
elements are still critical. Especially with regard to
typography, graphic elements that are enlarged to
unusual and extreme dimensions bring up completely
different issues than what are encountered
when the same fonts are used small. Tiny problems
in the cut of a font—from the overall craftsmanship
of the type family to the specific characteristics of
each letterform—are greatly magnified at a huge
scale. Misalignment of type, graphics, and images
become glaring mistakes. Precision and alert production
supervision are required when dealing with
large-scale pieces.
Some things never change
As in all graphic design, those working at the environmental
scale depend on their typographic skills
to tell brand stories. Type sends messages, echoes
themes, provides information, and focuses attention.
It is an organizing and identifying element, one that
can hardly help but impact audiences. And of course
it must create a response in the viewer.
Big or small, type must be carefully selected
to be appropriate, evocative, and effective. George
Nelson, one of the most influential designers of the
20th century, noted in his 1977 book How To See
that “Letterforms can be graceful, clumsy, brash, vulgar,
elegant, modern, old-fashioned, dense, delicate.
Then there is the matter of legibility.” Large type can
be used for distance identification, to convey content
in a readable way, or even as a decorative element.
Successful design is always a matter of being dedicated
to effective typographic usage. It isn’t something
a designer can learn from a book. It’s in the
“trial and error” side of design that large-scale type
springs to perfection.
SIDEBAR: Good Type vs. Bad Type
Choosing the right font is an important
part of any project, but selection is critical when the type will be
applied in an environmental setting. What’s the best way to decide?
Minute details become
extremely important
when letterforms are
in huge scale. The
forms of each letter
in a typeface work
together to create a
specific feeling or
“read.” Beyond this,
there are often a variety
of cuts of each
font family to choose
from. Classic, welldrawn
fonts are timeless
and will always be
effective. Train your
eye to distinguish a
well-structured alphabet.
Sean Adams,
creative director of
AdamsMorioka, developed this
Good/Bad graphic
to help his CalArts
students with the
subtle but critical
differences in fonts.
Adams recommends
that designers “look
at the details of each
letter’s construction—
proportions, especially
the contrast of thicks
and thins; curves
versus linear strokes;
positive and negative
spaces.” Look
at the craftsmanship
of the component
parts—ascenders,
descenders, terminals,
crossbars, and loops.
Finally, check for consistent
typographic
color and texture—this
indicates that compensation
was made
for optical variances.
