Sign designers sometimes complain that architects don't like signs cluttering up their beautiful buildings. As Edo Smitshuijzen reports in his recent book,
Signage Design Manual, “They perceive signage as an assault on the aesthetics of their creation and as an insult to the self-evidence of their spatial design. A lot of them carry an almost sacred but entirely unfounded belief in the functionality of their ‘wordless’ buildings”.
Perhaps this is taking it a bit far, so, as preparation for a short article I'm writing on this, I thought I would see what coverage sign design and wayfinding gets in the RIBA bookshop.
There was one book on signs - Smitshuijzen's. And I can confirm that there was indeed a sign outside the building... just.
