Branding and wayfinding for the Aga Khan Centre in London, United Kingdom

This is the first London building designed by the Pritzker winning Japanese firm Maki and Associates. The building hosts a mixture of office space, public lecture rooms, a library and retail across a surface of 10,000sqm. One of the Centre’s key features is a series of terraces, gardens and courtyards dotted around different floors.
Bright Dot Design was tasked with developing an all-encompassing internal and external wayfinding and signage system for the Centre. The architect’s aspiration was to achieve full design consistency across all signage manifestations, from directional to statutory signage, and also including very detailed applications such as captions for the building’s art collection and desk identification tags. The resulting system is perfectly consistent with the building’s design and reflecting Maki’s painstaking attention to detail and aspiration for full design integration.
We focussed on understanding the many different uses and user groups to minimise the number of signs needed to support the strategy but ensure effective navigation support, and devised a meaningful naming conventions for communal spaces and individual rooms. We also developed the graphic language for the system: we specified fonts and typographic rules, and designed a set of bespoke pictograms to be used on signage. We also looked at logo manifestations on the building envelope and external signage.
The resulting signage system’s design echoes the building’s aesthetics through playing with the transparency of the material chosen for the signs, and subtle use of patterns.

The Global City is Vietnam’s most modern mixed-use development of approximately 1.9m sqm, comprising a mixture of low and high-rise luxury residential, luxury villas and a retail shopping mall, designed by Foster+Partners Architects. The development also includes an administrative centre and various schools and public buildings.

Owning the prime location (or called "the crown jewel" of Ho Chi Minh City) at An Phu ward, Thu Duc city, The Global City is served by expressways, arterial roads and metro lines.

We delivered a comprehensive wayfinding strategy covering pedestrian and cycling networks across the whole development, and for the different building typologies as per the project scope. This included directional and identification information in public outdoor areas and links to private and public transport facilities.

Wayfinding System for a new airport in Saudi Arabia

Working for one of the top global architectural firms as part of an international multi-disciplinary team, we designed an innovative wayfinding system for a new international airport in Saudi. This included developing a wayfinding strategy, defining the typographic rules and the design of all signage elements both front and back of house. The airport is currently under construction (2023)

Lusail Towers is a landmark project in Qatar designed by Foster+Partners, envisioned as the catalyst for a new central business district in Lusail city with a distinctive collection of four high-rise buildings. The 1.1 million-square-metre development will host the headquarters for the Qatar National Bank, Qatar Central Bank and Qatar Investment Authority alongside several other global organisations including Qatari Diar, while creating a new downtown district that is sensitive to the climate.

Located at the end of the commercial boulevard that links the new football stadium to the corniche, the two taller towers stand at 70 storeys, while the other two are 50-storeys-high, all arranged symmetrically around a central plaza that seeks to complement the existing public spaces in Lusail City. At the base, a network of three, four and five storey podium buildings surround each tower. Providing support facilities for the towers with shops, cafes, events and exhibition centre, gym facilities, training facilities, banks and restaurants they animate the public realm, and are carefully placed to form human-scale streets and a shaded, pedestrian-friendly ground plane.

We developed the fitout wayfinding scheme, delivering detailed signage plans for office and podium buildings. The work included developing a wayfinding strategy, product design, graphic design, specifications, and content scheduling.

Vehicle livery for the Marconi Express monorail

 After delivering station wayfinding, service brand and communication strategy (together with our local partners Kitchencoop) we were asked to design the vehicle livery for this cutting edge monorail system connecting Bologna Marconi Airport to the city centre rail station. The final outcome is based on graphics that reference the architectural features: the fading grid at the bottom of the cab is taken from the perforated cladding of the system’s suspended bridges, and the pictogram used links into the iconography of the signage system. We also considered how advertising could be applied as a full wrap to the vehicle.

Marketing collaterals, event banners, environmental graphics and website design for this global institution. The project was delivered within very challenging timescales, and through coordination with a client team in two different countries.

Yunīku casualwear

Study for a casualwear brand. The fundamental principle behind the visual identity development was the creation of a strong logo creating a sense of individuality (‘Yunīku’ means ‘unique’) and a deep connection with the Japanese roots of the brand. The resulting image is striking in its simplicity: through the use of 3 bold colours and the geometrisation of hiragana characters we built a logo highly recognisable even by non-japanese speakers and suitable for a whole range of applications to garments, accessories and environments.