Welcome to the Sign Design Society
The Sign Design Society (SDS) is for anyone interested in information and graphic communication within buildings and public spaces, including:
- Wayfinding
- Interpretative graphics
- Brand and experiential/environmental graphics
- Statutory and health & safety signs
As well as raising the profile of our disciplines, we offer members a programme of events, resources and initiatives to help them:
- Keep up to date and improve their practice
- Find potential consultants, collaborators & employees
- Promote their work and capabilities
To join choose a membership plan that suits you and sign up!
Our events
H2E studio co‑founder Ingūna Elere joins us for our July ’26 online seminar to demonstrate how clinical and structural constraints can be transformed into environments that are intuitive, emotionally supportive, and deeply human. An approach that is built on a three‑tier framework: Function, value and meaning. Ingūna uses two of H2E’s recently completed wayfinding schemes for the Latvian healthcare sector to illustrate this philosophy in action. She argues that environmental graphics and placemaking are not decorative, but essential therapeutic tools, turning complex buildings into spaces that are functional, meaningful, and emotionally restorative.
Discover what’s positive and exciting in the world right now for wayfinding and placemaking, from bold, people-first design to smart new tech.
Interested in a membership?
News
2nd edition Sign design guide now available to buy!
The new edition of the guide continues to provide practical guidance to experts and non-specialists alike, based on both best practice in inclusive design and the latest research.
Third party events
A look into non-linear type families and their conception, with Greg Gazdowicz.
In 2024, Tal Leming was tasked with designing a new cartographic typeface for the National Geographic Society. This new typeface needed to pair with Society’s long-serving cartographic typefaces. Not much was known about those typefaces, so he started digging into their origins and stumbled onto an amazing story of the Society quietly inventing a form of phototypesetting in the early 1930s. This discovery led to all sorts of concrete and abstract questions that affected the scope of the new typeface. Who designed those typefaces? Why do they look the way that they do? Am I making a new typeface or am I reviving a typeface? Am I even the designer of this new typeface? In this talk, Tal will lead us through the project and share the discoveries he made along the way.
Join us at the launch of The Typefounder’s Hand Mould, a new book by Stan Nelson published by The Legacy Press and Norwich Printing Museum. As well as presentations from the author, the event will include a typefounding demonstration at 7pm. Attendees will be able to purchase the book at a special price.
This exhibition will chart Walker’s importance in the world of typography and printing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, from his first private press involvement with the founding and operation of William Morris’s Kelmscott Press (1891–1898), his partnership with Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson at the Doves Press (1900–1917), through to his final printing collaboration with Wilfred Merton and Bruce Rogers.
Richard Ardagh will talk about his recently published book, Type Archived, which documents the story and collections of London’s legendary Type Archive. Showcasing highlights from some 8 million items, these materials form a tangible history of typography and printing in the UK, from the ancient materials of Sheffield foundry Stephenson Blake and the innovative woodletter factory of Robert DeLittle in York, to the precision hot-metal machinery and global operations of The Monotype Corporation. Ardagh studied punchcutting and matrix-making with the senior staff on site until the Archive’s closure in 2023 and will also share his experiences of ‘engineering the word’.