Interpretive Signs & Environment Design

Sandbox Signs + Graphics works with interpretation designers, architects, interior designers, graphic designers, marketing teams and business owners to create spaces that enhance the customer, visitor, and employee experience. Our sign design and installation services support heritage interpretation, environment design, and experience design. The result is a functional and visually appealing environment that people enjoy being in.

Disciplines Supported by Sign Services

Our sign services support the following disciplines:

Environment Design

Environment design involves all of the disciplines that work to create spaces that communicate identity, information, and brand: architecture, interior design, sign making, graphic design, and marketing. The goal of environment design is to shape the experience of the visitors or staff. Wayfinding (how a person navigates through a space), signage, and display signage are integral to a successfully realized environment, whether indoor, outdoor, building, or event/trade show.

Experience Design

Experience design is a discipline concerned with the creation of spaces, services, and products, with the goal of enhancing the personal experience. Regardless of the context (retail, public space, office), experiential design engages the visitor subtly at key touchpoints — the points of interaction — informing, guiding and creating an impression through communication, design, brand and theme.

Heritage Interpretation

Interpretation planners and designers create the user experience for informal learning spaces such as museums, galleries, heritage sites, exhibits, event spaces, and other public use spaces. The goal: communication through interaction and visual/graphic story telling. Though interpretation design is often thought of as specific to heritage sites (called heritage interpretation), it also has many applications relevant to the commercial sector. Sandbox creates a variety of interpretive signs for heritage sites, museums, galleries, historical sites, events and educational installations.

Environment Design Benefits

Users of public or private spaces and business owners benefit as follows:

Retail Design Benefits

For a retailer, environment/experience design might mean displays that are placed within the expected path of a shopper (retail touch-points) that are easily seen and read, communicate clearly, and branded and designed consistently. The shopper interacts with the space with ease and confidence.

They find what they want — or find what they didn’t know they wanted (an impulse purchase or a sale item, for example). For the retailer, the benefit is increased customer satisfaction, reduced need for sales staff-customer interaction, and, with some planning and a little luck, increased sales. The customer feels empowered using the space (doesn’t feel lost or frustrated), is more likely to make a purchase, and is more likely to have a positive feeling when shopping in the store.

Office Design Benefits

Office space planning, so often haphazard or unplanned, can also benefit from environmental, experiential, and interpretive planning and design. Office signage, wayfinding signs, and displays can all positively contribute to a visitor’s experience, market services and product, and strengthen the person’s connection to your brand.

Though your office’s public-use or visitor waiting areas are important, the employee-use areas are, too. Work space design that includes privacy panels and privacy film is a good example of office environment design elements that Sandbox often creates for businesses. Staff are given the privacy they need to focus on their work, without feeling like everyone is watching them. Productivity has been proven to increase when staff feel trusted to work independently, yet are free to easily collaborate and communicate verbally with others in the office.

Exhibit & Event Design Benefits

Designing for interactive exhibits, whether they are educationally oriented, such as museums, science centres, parks, and visitor centres; or, sales oriented, like trade shows, real estate sales centres, and showrooms all have the same goal: create spaces that enhance the visitor experience.

Planning an exhibit experience involves many forms of visitor-centered design, including: wayfinding signs, display signs, graphics, interior design, and architectural design.