While Royal Mail’s property team had established new standards outlining maintenance and refurbishment for its 3000 properties, they still needed to simplify and consolidate the signage family. They approached Integrity with one aim – to introduce new signage family standards and implementation guidelines.
Bridging the gap
This project was to be co-funded by the Brand team who, during the previous year, had commissioned Wolff Olins to refresh the company’s identity. Part of our remit was to work with the property, operations and the brand team to make sure the new identity and tone of voice was applied to the signage family.
Lack of direction
We began by auditing five different sites. Poorly signed for both staff and customers, we found obscured entrances, signs hidden behind trees and fences. The actual tone of the words on the signs was also aggressive and authoritarian, and somewhat threatening – in the car park, for instance, visitors and staff were met by words like ‘beware!’, ‘warning’ and ‘you will be fined’.
We found, everything, down to the use of capital letters and punctuation, was inconsistent. What’s more, many of the permanent signs were printed on paper and blu-tacked to the wall,while every door in the building seemed to be covered in illegible health and safety notices – visually, it was a mess. With poor design and application, the signs were not as readable as they should be, or DDA compliant.
Clear thinking
From our audit, we identified two distinct sign types – wayfinding and operational information. Our first task was to design the signs themselves. Then we needed to develop a set of detailed, visual guidelines that could be used as a practical tool to implement the signs in buildings across England, Scotland and Wales.
So far, the new signage has been implemented in the Shoreham and Gatwick Mail Centre. And any new furnishings or property will feature the signage family we designed.
Industry or sector
Logistics
Country
UK
Challenge
Signage guidelines for mail centres
Services
Brand audit
Guidelines
Links
Royal Mail
Downloads
Customer experience factsheet.