RNLI Design
Award-winning
The project has been crowned winner for the National Design Award in the Wayfinding and Environmental Graphics category.
The judges said:
“This is an absolutely brilliant project, showing clear innovation, fitting with the environment and audience for an overall beautifully carried out piece.”
RNLI launched the Design out Drowning project to find a radically new approach to communicate beach safety to visitors. Imagemakers won the competitive tender.
Inspired by watching children drawing in the sand, backed up by research into behavioural principles and talking to lifeguards and volunteers, we came up with a simple, innovative concept that uses the sand as a canvas.
Beachgoers can’t miss it! Careful consideration was given to scale and layout format for maximum legibility at distance – often from the top of cliffs. The sand signage was successfully trialled at several beaches in Cornwall and was so successful that RNLI aims to roll it out at more locations.