Wayfinding and Tactile Signage for the Museum of the Future
Sun Studio produced the wayfinding signage for the Museum of the Future in Dubai: the directional panels, the parking and lobby boards, and the exit signs that take a visitor back out to Sheikh Zayed Road.
Every panel is bilingual Arabic and English, printed with a 3 mm embossed tactile finish so the information can be read by touch as well as by sight.
Project facts
- Client
- Museum of the Future
- Location
- Dubai
- Printing service
- Signage, wayfinding and tactile printing
- Application
- Directional, parking, lobby and exit wayfinding
- Languages
- Arabic and English on every panel
- Finish
- 3 mm embossed 3D tactile relief
The requirement
A museum this heavily visited has to be navigable by someone who has never been inside it before, reading in either Arabic or English, on foot, at pace, usually while carrying something.
The signage also had to be accessible rather than merely legible. Raised lettering and symbols mean the panels serve a visitor reading with their fingertips, not only one reading from across the lobby.
What we did
The relief is built in cured ink rather than cut, cast or glued on. Each pass of UV ink sets instantly, so the next can be laid on top of it, and the lettering is taken up to a 3 mm embossed finish from the same file that carries the artwork.
That keeps the tactile layer and the printed layer in perfect register, because they are the same operation. Applied letters have to be positioned and can drift; a built-up one cannot.
The panels carry a soft gradient ground behind the type, which is the hard part to hold consistent across a set. A gradient that banded or shifted hue from panel to panel would be obvious with several signs in view at once.
Technical considerations
Bilingual layout is a typographic problem before it is a printing one. Arabic runs right to left and English left to right, and both have to sit on a panel without either language looking like a translation added afterwards.
Arabic type does not survive being stretched or re-spaced to fit a box, so the artwork is set rather than scaled.
The outcome
A full wayfinding set for one of Dubai's most visited buildings, readable in two languages and under the fingertips.