Museum signs

The role of museum signs is multi-faceted. As with any business, there first needs to be a welcome sign. This needs to be placed on the front of the building allowing visitors to know what is inside. It can also be important to display any special exhibit information and opening hours at the front of the building as well.

Once inside, museums tend to be quite large, so it may be necessary to either have a map in the first room or have directional arrows leading visitors around the building.

Exhibition signs are also important. Whatever is on display such as an artwork or artefact needs to be labelled clearly. These signs can be simple white backgrounds with clear black text. Other exhibition signs can provide more overall information and can be much more informative. They can hold pictures and text and tend to be large so that groups of people can read them at the same time.

Lastly, there are the instruction signs. Many objects within museums are fragile, so it is important to have ‘Do Not Touch’ and ‘No Flash Photography’ signs around the museum to protect the works. These can be accompanied by a simple graphic within the traditional circle that contains a bold ‘x’.