Other Designs II: Environmental Graphics

Graphic Designers who wish to be true successful professionals, must be aware and knowledgeable in all matters of graphics and designs including different types of designs.  Environmental graphics are one of the many types of designs a graphic illustrator can create.  Environmental Graphics are designs that include architectural elements in order to better inform and create a spatial organization of a specific area or place.   Environmental graphic design is actually a profession in which designers create such graphics concerned with wayfinding, or the idea of using graphical icons in order to navigate an environment, such as maps and signs.

Thinking back to the beginning of civilizations, when roads where being created and buildings being constructed, back when the need for environmental graphics became clear, it is no different from nowadays.  With the advancement of society and technology, new needs will rise and new needs for graphics will rise as well.  The need to label the environment around us to better navigate it will always be there.

In my opinion, the future will bring change to the environmental graphics and their designers, but they will still be needed.  For example, cartographers used to create maps for individuals to be able to commute from one place to another.  Nowadays, technology has created interactive maps that are installed within our cars that literally “tell us” how to get from one place to another.  However, there is still someone who needs to design the digital maps and user interfaces of these navigation systems.

I also believe environmental graphics will not be obsolete, they will always have use, because people will always need to know how to get from point A to point B, whether it is from the parking lot to the emergency room in a hospital, or from Miami to New York.  The way we search for and retrieve the information may change from a physical map to a navigation system, cell phone or computer.  We might even have digital transparent air-screens pop up in front of us magically by just thinking of them, but there will always be a need for the actual design of the information, the user interface and the information itself.

One of my favorite things is actually creating maps.   I am sharing two different maps here, one of a fictitious mall and another of a building.

Fictitious Mall Map

Building Floor Map