Brief
Working with Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council, we implemented a comprehensive town centre wayfinding scheme – from design finalisation and statutory consents through to manufacture, installation and sustainable removal of the existing legacy estate.
Solution
The existing signage estate presented a clear problem: 42 signs of varying age, condition and style, spread across a town of winding pedestrian routes, made navigation genuinely difficult for visitors. The council’s strategy and design concept, created by David Lock Associates, called for a coherent new hierarchy that would make the town more walkable and discoverable – and that felt rooted in Hinckley’s own identity rather than a generic system imposed on it.
Our role was to implement this wayfinding system across the town centre.
The most distinctive element of the scheme is the wayfinding totem mapping panel. Each totem uses a bespoke 650mm circular heads-up map, orientated to match the direction of travel, with distances expressed as walking times using isochrones rather than metres. The heads-up format eliminates the need for a visitor to mentally rotate a north-up map – something most people need to do in a town centre, where they are rarely facing north. To reinforce this, key landmarks were illustrated in 3D from multiple angles, so each map shows the building as it appears from that specific viewpoint.
The full sign family covers wayfinding totems, car park directional totems, fingerposts, wall-mounted panels and jitty nameplates – jitty being the Leicestershire term for the narrow pedestrian passages between buildings that form an important part of Hinckley’s route network. The black and gold colour scheme reflects the town’s existing heritage signage, applied consistently across all sign types. Alongside the new installation, we removed and sustainably disposed of the entire redundant estate, achieving a significant reduction in the number of signs on street. The council now holds fully editable artwork for all sign types, giving them long-term ownership of the system.
Services Supplied
- Design finalisation and construction drawings
- Site surveys across all proposed sign locations
- Highway consents coordinated with Leicestershire County Council
- Bespoke 650mm circular heads-up mapping panels with 3D landmark illustrations
- Manufacture of wayfinding totems, car park totems, fingerposts, wall-mounted panels and jitty nameplates
- On-site installation across Hinckley town centre
- Removal and sustainable disposal of 42 legacy signs
- Handover of fully editable artwork to the Council
