RAF Museum – wayfinding & signage scheme

ABG Design were commissioned by the Royal Airforce Museum to design signage and wayfinding schemes ensuring visitors had a welcome and enjoyable experience with accessibility to all areas of the Museum’s exhibitions, exhibits and facilities. One of the main challenges involved creating a connection between the large hangers that were from different periods of history and varying architectural styles and materials.

A new distinctive ‘family friendly’ typeface ‘neo sans’ was chosen as a headline font for all communications and top level signage while a secondary font ‘Roboto’ was chosen as an information font with good legibility across signage, print and digital applications. Simple, bold iconic images of historic aircraft profiles including the spitfire were used for the sub-brands and were applied to series of wayfinding banners leading visitors from the main underground station to the Museum entrance.

The signage, based on four sided totems, meant information could be located effectively within the landscaping without the need to fix to the listed buildings. It was designed to be bold and practical with a ‘utility feel’ with the graphics reflecting imagery seen in aviation. The signs were designed to be intuitive for visitors being large and visible from each hangar destination and also included tactile signs at facility destinations to help accessibility. Within the signage we added inspirational images of key exhibits that can be interchanged on a modular system when exhibits were updated. Modern contemporary materials were chosen such as powder coated aluminium and composite stone for the base.

View the brand identity design