Wayfinding and Graphic Design
We are architects, engineers, designers and urbanists.
Placemaking for a Modern World For more than 40 years, BDP has worked with clients to tell their stories through brand design, environmental graphics and wayfinding. We have a multi-disciplinary team of graphic designers, architects, interior designers, placemakers and wayfinding specialists. Together, we transform workplaces, retail, hospitality, healthcare and public spaces by embedding your culture, vision and values into built environments. With a portfolio of projects and clients across the globe, our work connects people to brands and places in a myriad of meaningful ways. From signage design to interpretive graphics, digital signage and placemaking features, it’s about deepening connections and positively influencing behaviour. The result is greater brand equity, empowered employees and unique visitor experiences.
Barton Science Centre
Wayfinding
Wayfinding is about making spaces understandable and easy to use for visitors. It’s about understanding how people navigate unfamiliar spaces – but it’s so much more than signage. Whether guiding people to underused spaces, giving spaces their own identity, creating inclusive and accessible spaces, or driving retail footfall, wayfinding is a vital piece of the placemaking experience. From wayfinding signage design to digital wayfinding and designing accessible environments, our process begins with strategy and flows through to design and implementation.
Environmental Graphics
Environmental graphics shape a place by telling a story. They communicate identity, activate spaces, and organise places for efficient navigation. From schools to university campuses, workplaces, to hospitals, entertainment venues and retail malls – our work spans a breadth of indoor and outdoor environments. Whether we’re building visitor loyalty, lowering stress levels or stimulating engagement – we enable memorable connections with place that change the way people think, feel and behave.
PwC Birmingham
Our Process
Strategy The strategy phase is all about discovery. Workshops and user experience surveys are a key part of our strategic process. We collaborate with the wider architectural team and when necessary conduct audits to find out where people make decisions, or lose their way. Identifying how they get from A to B by immersing ourselves in the nuances of the site, we deliver wayfinding strategies that are easy to understand and simple to navigate.
Alder Hey Children’s Hospital
PwC Watford
Design We apply the data and insights gathered in the strategic phase to design a suite of digital and static brand touch-points. As experts in information design, we give people the information they need at each decision point in their journey. We use iconography, graphics and industrial design techniques to elevate the experience of connecting people to their desired destination.
Implementation We make sure that what we design translates flawlessly to the real world. When designs are installed incorrectly, this impacts their effectiveness. Working closely with manufacturers, we ensure complex wayfinding systems – often made up of thousands of interconnecting touch-points – are implemented correctly and consistently.
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PwC Manchester
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PwC Birmingham
Location Various, UK
Client Pricewaterhouse Coopers Cost Confidential
Completion 2007–present
Working closely with PwC, we provide an interior and workplace design consultancy service that supports and enhances its brand. Signature touches include graphic illustrations and iconography that adorn work and breakout space areas, helping to create a sense of place in each of the locations.
PwC Reading
PwC Birmingham
PwC Leeds
PwC Manchester
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Location London Client MEAG
Cost Confidential Completion 2021
Located in the historic heart of the City of London, our transformation of this 11,000sqm office building carefully repositions its offering to prospective tenants, by meeting the new and dynamic requirements of contemporary workplace environments. A simple guidance system was developed which is applied directly to the wall as three-dimensional letters and symbols. It is very clearly visible and accordingly fits well into the architecture.
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Location London, UK
Client Westminster City Council Cost £70m
Completion 2019
64 Victoria occupies a prominent location in an area which has undergone major regeneration in recent years. The 22 storey building owned by Land Securities has been the headquarters of Westminster City Council since its construction in the 1960s. A complete upgrade has transformed the building inside and out.
Fulham Pier GD
Location Fulham, UK
Client Stuart Forbes Associates Cost Confidential Completion 2023
Fulham Football Club are developing west London’s next new destination – Fulham Pier at their Riverside stand. The development will host food, drink, music, art and leisure – morning, noon and night. The stadium is only used for 25 days a year as a football venue – but for the rest of the year it wants to be a fabulous destination where people have a great experience and feel inspired.
Working with Stuart Forbes Associates and Populous, our task was to develop a wayfinding strategy and bespoke design solutions to create spaces that encourage visitors to explore and take advantage of all that the venue has to offer.
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Location Dubai UAE
Client Heriot Watt University Cost Confidential Completion 2020
Heriot Watt University’s wayfinding unifies the highly functional requirements of the building’s programme with the aspirational interior objectives.
We were tasked with providing a strategic plan for room numbering and space naming, as well as advice on signage and branding. The resulting signage suite is calm and refined and gives order to the floors without detracting from the elegance of the interiors.
New Covent Garden Market Ar Ma
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Location London, UK
Client Covent Garden Market Authority Cost Confidential
Completion 2012–present
Covent Garden Market has been proudly feeding and supplying flowers for London from its home at Nine Elms for over 40 years. New Covent Garden Market is 46,500 sqm of modern and efficient trading space scheduled to be complete in 2025. Our wayfinding has been designed to reflect the visual identity and the vision of the development.
Ghadan 21 GD
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Location Abu Dhabi UAE
Client Department of Municipalities and Transport Cost Confidential Completion Ongoing
As part of the Ghadan 21 vision projects in Abu Dhabi, BDP was tasked to develop the wayfinding and signage design for Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Street and Hamdan Street – two of the city’s main thoroughfares. Our design strategy and design principles provide a baseline standard for multiple teams to develop signage that will display visual and material consistency throughout each of the projects.
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Location New Cairo, Egypt Client Confidential Cost Confidential Completion Ongoing
Mivida Mall is part of the Emaar Mivida masterplan and is located 8km east of New Cairo. BDP created a wayfinding strategy – a key element of which was to divide the mall into districts. These key destinations are named and Identified which helps visitors navigate the mall more easily and simplifies their journeys.
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Location Tonbridge, UK
Client Tonbridge School Cost £10.8m
Completion 2019
Tonbridge School’s science centre dates back to 1887 and was the first in the country to be purpose built. BDP designed the wayfinding scheme and collaborated with the heads of each science department to create and implement a series of information graphics displayed in each of the three libraries.
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Location Northampton, UK
Client Northamptonshire County Council and Galiford Try Cost £40.6
Completion 2017
One Angel Square is designed as two forms which enclose a central courtyard. An abundance of natural light and good visual connectivity between the floors and quadrangle create a building that allows both staff and visitors to experience a sense of well-being and foster collaboration. As part of an overall design remit that included wayfinding, sign and information design, we also created an identity for the building using bold typography, tonal colours, and strong iconography.
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Location Liverpool, UK
Client Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust Cost £167m
Completion 2015
At Alder Hey the wayfinding shapes the spaces by telling a story. They communicate identity and information, activate spaces, and organise areas for efficient navigation.
We worked with the artist Lucy Casson to develop the animal creatures. Our idea was to populate spaces with fantastical ‘beings’, birds and animals inhabiting the hospital, each acting as a wayfinding landmark and silent guide.
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Location Bristol
Client Carillion for North Bristol NHS Trust Cost £430m
Completion 2016
A BREEAM Excellent healthcare facility designed around a central, top-lit grand public concourse. As part of the development, BDP was tasked to develop the wayfinding and signage design. A unique approach to hospital wayfinding followed extensive consultation with patient and user stakeholders to identify the core wayfinding issues. The result is a solution based on a ‘Gate’ principle similar to that used at airports that cuts down on the amount of information needed to direct visitors to each department.
“ People are universally praising the design and quality of the space and the building. It is truly magnificent.” Tricia Down
Head of Capital Planning North Bristol NHS Trust
Exchange Station Ar ID
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Location Liverpool, UK
Client Aviva Investments Cost Confidential Completion 2013
Exchange Station is a Victorian railway station that has been transformed into one of Liverpool’s largest commercial office buildings. We considered every aspect of the project to create a cohesive brand language; everything from the wayfinding signage to the visual mark and typeface.
Hale Village Ar
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Location London, UK
Client Lee Valley Estates Cost Confidential Completion 2012
The rich history of this north London mixeduse site is celebrated in these slim sign totems creating an outdoor museum in an otherwise commercial setting. Words and images tell the site’s story and reveal it’s lost heritage, immortalising events and notables.
Edinburgh International Conference Centre Ar
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Location Edinburgh, UK
Client City of Edinburgh Council Cost £75m
Completion 2013
BDP were appointed to design an extension to the conference centre that would provide additional function space and a new atrium entrance to the building. Comprising direction, regulatory and identification signs, the wayfinding solution combines floor level colour coding that continues through to the existing building.
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Location Cumbria, UK
Client Kier for Cumbria County Council Cost £25m
Completion 2011
The building centres on a three storey glass atrium and includes a flexible lecture theatre to accommodate 400 people, which also provides a civic quality space for Carlisle.
The extensive use of graphics draws on the four learning zones. Bold branding for the school and the spaces within, a rich colour palette and large graphic elements relate to the broad and balanced curriculum on offer at the school.
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Location Newport, UK
Client University of Wales Cost Confidential Completion 2011
The wayfinding design for the University of Wales takes reference from the new architecture, echoing the soft curves of the building. Supergraphics bring character and personality to the interior space highlighting the creative outputs of the School of Art, Media and Design.
Cornmill Gardens GD Li
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Location London, UK
Client London Borough of Lewisham Cost £1.5m
Completion 2007
Cornmill Gardens was the first scheme to be implemented as part of the ‘Urban Renaissance in Lewisham’ programme and opened in summer 2007. We designed striking large scale identification markers to identify, map and direct pedestrians and cyclists linking the surrounding areas of town centre, transport hub and a new residential development.
“A trail-blazing project that’s kick-starting a true renaissance for Lewisham.” Martin Savage
Project Landscape Architect
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Location London, UK
Client University of London Cost £44m
Completion 2014
Senate House in Bloomsbury, is a Grade II listed building and one of the finest examples of work by the architect Charles Holden. Our wayfinding design gently integrates the graphic elements with the architectural materials, while also providing up to date and flexible information.
Marc Jenkins
Associate, Head of Wayfinding and Environmental Graphics marc.jenkins@bdp.com
Cover: LDN:W
Photography: Nick Caville, Blackstation, David Barbour, Fotohaus Gareth Gardner, Hufton+Crow, John Kees, Killian O’Sullivan, Roland Halbe, Martine Hamilton-Knight, Neil Warner, Sanna Fisher-Payne, Philip Vile, Terrence Zhang
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“ What we do is really about visitor experience. Yes, it’s about navigating buildings and spaces, but it is also about the touch-points that a visitor comes into contact with before and during their visit – the website, social media, the printed map, the wayfinding app and the signage. Everything has to work together holistically.” Marc Jenkins
Associate, Head of Wayfinding and Environmental Graphics
We are architects, engineers, designers and urbanists.