edmonton river valley parks signage

march, 2022

signage design, design research, UX design, illustration

project overview

This was a class project for my Advanced Graphic Design. In the winter of 2022, representatives from the City of Edmonton were invited to visit our class, where our task was to work in pairs to devise a new signage system for the Edmonton River Valley park system of trails. After presenting our final designed solution, the City of Edmonton would then select one lucky group to install their signage into the River Valley!

My role of in this project was doing the illustrations, as well as the signage guidelines booklet; my group partner, Taylor Carlin, was involved with the design of the signs themselves.

The front cover of the signage booklet, as well as an inside spread.

our process

defining the problem

Currently, the River Valley has signs that provide information on the flora and fauna that can be found around Edmonton. The City of Edmonton has recently been updating and improving upon a lot of their park signage, with the next step of this process being the River Valley park trail signs.

project considerations

Some of the considerations for the new signage was that it had to be modular enough for new signage to be added onto the system, it had to withstand Edmontonian winters and summers, be graffiti-proof, and be appropriate for a wide range of audiences that use the River Valley park trails.

final deliverables

our designed solution

The main concept behind our final design would be a system that can be adapted depending on the amount of information needed on a given sign, but still have a cohesive and identifiable system. We therefore broke this up into signs with 1 species, with 2 species, and with 3 species.

For the imagery included on the signs, we decided to go with a combined photographic-illustrated approach. We decided that including photography would be important for identifying flora and fauna, but that including elements of illustration would allow the photographs to blend seamlessly with the rest of our designs.

Examples of our final designed system, mocked up in situ. Please click to see details.

the signage booklet

The last part of this project was to assemble a booklet detailing our process, our final solution and our rationale, measurements as well as recommended materials for assembling the final signs.