Signs of Curiosity
When 'We The Curious' - one of the UK's leading science centres and educational charities - needed to refresh its 10-year-old wayfinding signage, the centre chose long time graphics partner Ottimo Digital to translate its designs into reality.
We The Curious evolved from The Exploratory, which opened in Bristol in 1984, and brought hands-on science experiments to schoolchildren and visitors by the thousand, in stark contrast to most other museums and their "don't touch and be quiet" attitudes.
Although the original Bristol Exploratory finally closed its doors in 1999, We The Curious (then called Explore At-Bristol) was opened in 2000 as part of the National Lottery Millennium project regenerating the historical Floating Harbour in Bristol. We The Curious occupies a Grade II listed building on Canons Wharf, a former railway goods shed and one of the first buildings to use reinforced concrete when it was built in 1906. At-Bristol became We The Curious in September 2017, its vision: “to create a future where everyone is included, curious and inspired by science to build a better world together.”
Since that time, We The Curious has welcomed over 4 million visitors through its doors to interact with the hundreds of exhibits and experiments, including 70,000 schoolchildren every year on visits, workshops and many other activities.
The centre features over 250 interactive exhibits over two floors, and multiple venue and breakout spaces for workshops, education and corporate hire. It is also home to the UK’s first 3D planetarium. After ten years, the centre's signage was in need of updating and refreshment.
Ottimo's senior production manager, Craig Boxley, has worked with We The Curious over many years, creating wall vinyls and information boards, and even a glow-in-the-dark vinyl interactive wall exhibit for the popular attraction, and began discussions with Graphic Designer Alex Smye-Rumsby and Workshop and Exhibitions Manager Andy Coco about the centre's requirement for new signage in October 2021.
The signage needed to be clear and accessible, and it needed to be robust enough to withstand a deployment of 15 years in a public environment. Craig, Alex and Andy created a realistic production plan for several hundred individual signs, before the job was handed over to Ottimo for production. The final designs incorporated a consistent look, contrasting bare wood with translucent acrylic for much of the wayfinding and movable signage, plus scores of similarly styled, more traditional signage elements including emergency exit signs, visitors maps, and elevator information panels.
The principle wayfinding signage units were UV printed directly onto high-quality plywood sheets from 3mm to 18mm thick. The same process was used for a transparent blue and solid white print onto clear acrylic for the contrasting section of each sign. The individual components were then machine cut to their specific dimensions, lacquered, assembled, and mounted onto metalwork for installation into the centre in a rolling process throughout the Christmas period and the first two months of this year.
With all the signage now delivered and installed, Craig Boxley shared his satisfaction with this project's conclusion saying, "We've worked with We The Curious for over eight years, and I think we understand their ethos and approach very well. The new signage really ties the whole centre together with a single look and feel, and the contrasting acrylic and bare wood design really stands out, without detracting from its important primary purpose of showing people the way."
Craig concluded, "With so many individual pieces of signage to produce, many requiring careful cutting and assembly, this was always going to be a complex project requiring careful management and coordination. Some of the work, particularly the metalwork and lacquering needed to be outsourced to sectors with differing lead times, and it was an interesting challenge to keep the workflow running smoothly throughout the whole process."
Alex from We The Curious said, “This has been a great project to work on with Ottimo. Thanks to our extensive professional relationship, they showed a real understanding of our requirements as an interactive science centre. We’ve already had great feedback from both visitors and various teams within the organisation. We set them a real challenge in terms of the design for the wayfinding and they smashed it out the park.”