The V&A in South Kensington, London is home to seven miles of gallery space. In order to connect its collections to its four million annual visitors, the art and design museum needed new, clear and timeless signage that would "empower visitors to explore" and allow them to discover lesser-known parts of the museum.

With seven floors across three interconnected buildings, five temporary exhibition spaces, four shops and three cafés, navigating the museum is no easy feat. Now, visitors old and new can discover galleries in the museum with its wayfinding signage and new printed map that also works in a digital environment too.

Working in collaboration with wayfinding consultancy AllPointsWest, design consultancy dn&co designed new internal and external signage for the V&A that befits the museum’s collection and its Grade I listed surroundings.

Philippa Simpson, director of design, estate and Futureplan at the V&A, comments: "With this project, we wanted to encourage visitors to explore the lesser-known parts of the museum.

"This wasn’t just about getting people from A to B, but about nurturing and allowing for unpredictable behaviours, as people wander and stumble across parts of the collection unexpectedly.

Coloured signs point to paid-for exhibitions

"Importantly, as signage and maps are something that every single visitor to the V&A interacts with, the signs had to be beautiful, discreet, reflect the ethos of who we are as a museum, and what we stand for."

The signs are made from tulipwood, dyed black and stripped of any extraneous colour except for highlighting ticketed exhibitions. Colour acts as a "beacon" for visitors who have paid for an exhibition by directing them through the ground floor to their destination quicker.

The redesign of the system compromises 60 new totems, 130 hanging signs and a new type of sign installed at the threshold of the galleries. Part of the new design included renumbering the floors of the V&A which aims to reinforce the perception of the museum as one building, and therefore a more manageable place to visit.

"Wayfinding is not a static process, it’s a dynamic one," explains dn&co creative director, Patrick Eley. "It’s concerned with the way people move through spaces, and the cues they follow.

"Signs are one of those cues; architecture itself is another, as we are innately guided by it. And what architecture! The V&A is a monumental environment, airport-scale, but richly detailed with no one space the same as another. Our design had to live comfortably in this world-leading museum of art and design and to do so it treads a careful line."

The signs were designed to be noticeable but without taking attention away from the collections

Eley continues: "The signs needed to have a sense of permanence, while being constantly adaptable. They had to be 'noticeable', but not shouty. They had to be directive, and quietly reassuring, but also be discreet enough to hide in plain sight to let the V&A collection take centre stage."

Part of the redesign included an entirely new map, informed by archival research and available in printed format, which also works in a digital environment with vertical circulation points that align across floors. The all-new maps were printed by London firm, Push Print.

Simpson concludes: "This project has been one of the most collaborative design processes I've ever been part of. Working with dn&co and AllPointsWest was a "meeting of minds", with a unique combination of creativity, and practical, specialist knowledge.

"Importantly, we challenged each other, learnt from each other, and have developed a solution that will help people discover the treasures at the V&A for years to come."

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