Built environments are incredibly multifaceted, and environmental graphic design (EGD) is a big part of that. Rebecca Ferlotti, content marketer, chatted with Jennifer Mayes Kloepfer, RGI’s environmental graphic designer, who knows this world well, having spent over 15 years in the industry. She explains more about the discipline—how EGD impacts our daily lives, how EGD enhances environments from an educational perspective, and the intricacies of the design process.
Where does environmental graphic design fall within RGI’s design process?
I think that’s a challenging question to answer. Environmental graphic design is kind of woven throughout our process. The way I’ve been trained to understand EGD is that it’s designing environments but with a little more wayfinding and communication versus the environment design discipline. We think about how we want people to move through the space and how we expect people will move through the space. And we design the signage and graphics in such a way that tells people to do what we want them to do.
So it’s a constant thought process that you all have of, “Is this going to work in the way we envisioned it? And if it doesn't, can we think quickly on our feet to come up with a solution to get someone through an environment in an effective way.” Is that an accurate description?
Yeah, it’s not really a start-and-stop process. There are no clear “We’re designing for EGD” and “Now we’re not designing for EGD” stages.
Got it! To circle back to your description of EGD regarding wayfinding. How do environmental graphics contribute to wayfinding and placemaking?
In my mind, they are one and the same. Environmental graphics are wayfinding and placemaking. You can't have one without the other.
If we're talking specifically about the graphic components, I would consider the graphic components to be the communicators of that message. So if we are creating wayfinding and placemaking, we are just using the graphics to tell people what to do.
We all benefit from EGD every day. It’s as simple as street signs. It’s within every building. You want to know where the front door is? EGD is getting you there. You want to know where the bathroom is? EGD is getting you there. When you walk into a lobby and see huge graphics on the wall, a big donor wall, or any company history—those all contribute to your experience within a space.
Company history definitely ties into brand identity. What are some of the ways EGD can showcase brand identity outside of just company information?
It's in all of your materials. If you have an established brand with a logo, colors, and fonts, that’s your palette for everything you're making. If your brand has morals and ethics you want to convey, then that’s going to be shown in how we create the graphic. Depending on the mood we’re going for, we’ll use different materials, imagery, and colors to convey the brand identity.
There’s not only the company brand identity that they've established, but also piggybacking on what already exists and coming up with the materials to use, really showcasing that brand identity within EGD. I wanted to touch on color theory because brands have logos, but there are definitely more colors to incorporate than just the logo colors. How might the colors within a graphic affect visitors to a space?
It’s really dependent on the brand and the message they want to send. Color theory is always there in the back of our minds. Everything I learned from that class in college has never left my brain. So, it’s like “What do you want to say? What message do you want to say?” The color goes into it as well as what we’re choosing to tell your story. If you're interested in color theory, some of the things that you would assume are true—blues and greens are calming; reds are not. We have to think about what we want people to feel when selecting the colors to use. Maybe a brand has a red logo, but that doesn’t mean we're going to do red walls.
Sometimes, folks don't have a great idea of what their brand is or what they want it to be, so you have to get to know your clients, ask a lot of questions, and find out who they are to fill in those holes for them. Not everybody can tell you what they want. They just know they want something done that’s modern and awesome, so you have to dig.
Definitely! There’s a lot of interviewing that goes into this. Dave and I talked about that too. Everyone at RGI is continuously talking and trying to get more information in order to communicate clients’ visions. Part of that is incorporating interactivity and, consequently, the senses. The sight part is clear with EGD, but what are some of the ways folks can incorporate more senses into EGD?
I guess this is more with the environment design where we’ve explored scent within exhibits. I think that can work with EGD as well. People are going to be drawn to some smells, and maybe turned off by others. It's not something I've considered as wayfinding, but scent is something that we’re looking at. Regarding our scent machine, we had to be careful with that for people who have allergies—not making it overpowering and ensuring the smell would dissipate quickly enough.
I don't know if we're ever going to get to taste; although, for wayfinding, I did go to the Color Factory, and in a couple of the rooms, you were invited to try food as part of your experience. I have a lot of food allergies, so I didn't eat them, but I can just imagine how it would enhance your experience. It wasn’t really sending a certain message, but it was an experience to have while you’re in a room that’s a specific color. One had Pop Rocks®, but you couldn’t see what flavor they were. You looked at images while you were eating them, and you had to guess the flavor the Pop Rocks were while you were looking at those images.
When I was in color theory, we did a unit on the taste of color and what you believe color tastes like. So I remember my group had green, and we had to make something that tasted green. Of course they were encouraging you not to just make green foods. You had to think about, “When I taste this, what comes to mind? Is it green or not?”
With standard environmental graphics, they should all follow ADA guidelines like door placards, restroom signs, and Braille. That's a requirement, so that part of “touch” is there.
And the other part of graphics that we didn't talk about as much with EGD is sound. For exhibits like NASA’s planetary science, heliophysics, and Earth science, there was so much going on that we had to be cautious with sound levels as well as the sounds we were choosing. Our planet builder exhibit had an ongoing, looping soundtrack. We spent a ton of time listening to different music options to make sure that it was a long loop, that it was ethereal, and that it wouldn’t be irritating to listen to for someone working in the space for 8+ hours. In that way, you’re not only taking visitors into consideration, but the team as well. There’s also interactions with other exhibits: Are the sounds from nearby exhibits going to clash? All those controls have to be adjustable.
So there are lots of sense-related components to consider within built environments in general, and one of the goals is to educate. I wanted to get your perspective on how EGD complements education—thinking about being in a Kindergarten classroom with quotes on the wall, or even within library systems.
I mean, in its simplest form EGD is signs. It’s signs and its education. With exhibits, it’s imperative to how people interact with them. They need to know:
What is this exhibit?
Why am I interacting with this exhibit?
What am I supposed to learn?
How do I learn it?
The graphics become crucial as much as the actual interaction. On the planet builder, there were on-the-screen directions as well as static graphic panels on either side explaining “What even is an exoplanet? Why do I care about exoplanets?” Anyone can type a few paragraphs and put it up on a sign, but no one wants to read that. You have to make sure the info is there, that it's right, and that it’s presented in a way that people are actually going to retain it. It’s thinking through psychological principles—understanding how people will learn and can learn.
There’s so much to consider: how people are going to act, how we can get them to do what we want them to do, and how we can get them to retain information (not just read it).
At the library we’ve been working on, it's the same thing. They have exhibits teaching you all these different things. You're only going to get so much from interacting with an exhibit, and you're only going to get so much from reading about it. The interaction and the instructional aspects going hand-in-hand is the happy medium we always want to achieve.