Silver Graphics, Illustration and Visual Communication Design · 2022
Shenzhen Jiangangshan Hill Park Wayfinding Signage System
by Updesign
- A' Design Award 2022 Silver Winner in Graphics, Illustration and Visual Communication Design
- Awarded April 15, 2022
- CLIENT: Xin’an Sub-district Office
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 42,580
- Verification code 553C25B111 · Verify this award
About Shenzhen Jiangangshan Hill Park Wayfinding Signage System
Henri Rousseau's impressionist style is ingeniously applied as the main visual elements into this project. Wayfinding signs are designed as interesting impressionist-illustration silhouettes here and there in the park, creating a tranquil eco-friendly hilly aura for visitors. The artist's thoughts and the project's purposes are brought into resonance by the concept of harmony between human and nature.
The Shenzhen Jiangangshan Hill Park Wayfinding Signage System by Updesign exemplifies a distinguished approach to environmental graphic design wherein functional navigational requirements harmonize with poetic visual expression, suggesting an understanding that public infrastructure may serve simultaneously as practical utility and aesthetic enhancement of shared landscapes. The vertical pylon format references traditional stele forms while employing contemporary materials and fabrication techniques, creating a dialogue between timeless monumentality and modern design sensibilities that positions this work within broader conversations about placemaking and the integration of designed objects within natural settings. The most technically accomplished passage appears in the die-cut letterform treatment, where the conventional parking symbol P has been transformed through negative space cutting to reveal an inner pictorial layer depicting indigenous avian life amid native foliage, this layered construction requiring precise registration between substrate planes while achieving a visual effect that shifts meaning from mere directional indicator to contemplative frame upon the natural world the park celebrates. The chromatic restraint demonstrates sophisticated understanding of environmental color relationships, the neutral gray serving as visual anchor that neither competes with seasonal vegetation changes nor diminishes in presence against varying sky conditions, while the cobalt interior layer provides sufficient contrast for legibility while maintaining chromatic harmony with the atmospheric blue overhead. The bilingual text treatment addresses accessibility across linguistic communities while maintaining visual hierarchy through scale differentiation and spatial separation. One might consider how this intervention transforms the experience of arrival and orientation within the park landscape, suggesting that the journey through public space deserves the same aesthetic consideration as the destination, and inviting reflection upon how designed objects may honor rather than diminish their natural contexts through thoughtful material selection, chromatic sensitivity, and the integration of imagery celebrating local ecological character.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- Henri Rousseau's impressionist style is ingeniously applied as the main visual elements into this project. Wayfinding signs are designed as interesting impressionist-illustration silhouettes here and there in the park, creating a tranquil eco-friendly hilly aura for visitors. The artist's thoughts and the project's purposes are brought into resonance by the concept of harmony between human and nature.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Material – Stainless Steel Baking Finish: 3mm thick, Sign Board Size: 2200mmX520mmX90mm, Sign Board Base: 700mmX800mmX600mm
- Tags
- Park, wayfinding signs, the way of gentle “hidden”, silhouettes, handmade technology, illustration, nature
- Production Technology
- Wayfinding sign boards requires only handmade processing technology without any weldings and creases. Thus, it needs high-quality metal materials with strong hardness and toughness to achieve artistically pierced and integrally bent appearance. In detail, the boards are set in a friendly lower position, and rounded edges of the boards and their pierced patterns are considerately designed, so that children could freely get in touch with them when they are curious about these interesting boards.
- Design Challenge
- The biggest challenge in this project is to assemble one complete sign board. Despite of semi-handmade crafts, the end-to-end combination still requires the precision of machine. In addition, smoothing process for rounded edges of the pierced patterns requires workers' carefulness and quality control of quantitative standards due to millimeter precision of included angle details. These details are particularly important for keeping style of the original works after the transformation.
- Project Duration
- April 2020 Bao'an District, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China
- Operation Flow
- Permeable pierced wayfinding signs are gently immersed into their wooded hilly surroundings. Light and shadows are joyfully playing between scattered illustration-silhouette sign boards and woods on the hills in a harmonious way. Visitors will enjoy a visually peaceful ambience when they are meandering among wooded paths.
- Research
- It's a process of combing art history to choose illustration works from one of famed artists in the world as the sample for silhouette style. Actually, many illustration works are suitable for making silhouettes, but few could accurately depict the vividness of animals and plants with distinct aesthetic adorning sense to meet various wayfinding signs in different application scenarios. A lot of time is spent in this project in pursuing the balance between craft effects and artistic style.
- Inspiration
- The wayfinding signage system is designed for a wooded hilly municipal park in Shenzhen. It's close to a reservoir, some early high-end residences and school districts. The design is required to preserve the existing ecological experience for most neighboring visitors who are familiar with the ways there. Accordingly, UPD adopts low-contrast colored silhouette art effect to well integrate the whole system into the natural environment in a gentle "hidden" way with basic function of wayfinding.
- Image Credits
- Updesign