The Florentine Botanical Garden is one of the oldest botanic gardens in the world. This project specifically highlights accessible design and explores how the garden can bee enjoyed through all the senses, even by visitors with disabilities.
This project aims to rebrand Florence's Botanical Gardens so everyone can equally enjoy its beauty. I worked to make the rebrand accessible to those with disabilities. This museum sits in the center of the city, yet it is often overlooked due to the lack of signage, promotion, and ownable branding. This projects brings out the creativeness of nature while ensuring the accessibility of the museum to all people.
The two main resources for accessible design are listed below:
Hausler, Jesse. “7 Things Every Designer Needs to Know about Accessibility.” Medium, Salesforce Designer, 18 Dec. 2015, medium.com/salesforce-ux/7-things-every-designer-needs-to-know-about-accessibility-64f105f0881b.
“Bookshop, Services and Accessibility: Natural History Museum: Sistema Museale Di Ateneo: Unifi.” Www.Sma.Unifi.It, www.sma.unifi.it/vp-846-bookshop-services-and-accessibility.html.
Inspired by the Art Nouveau style, the design of the branding is nature inspired with organic shapes and patterns. The aesthetic is soft and feminine but holds a traditional style to respect to the rich history of the gardens.
The final deliverable of the redesign of the Botanical Garden includes a logo, map, brochure, merch, and logo animation. To design a cohesive, refreshing brand identity, I focused on three major problems with the current identity and how design can support a solution. Below is the proposed brand redesign of Giardino dei Semplici.
Logo Design
The logo design is a combination of a wordmark and icon. The wordmark is purposefully crafted to feel traditional, but fresh. The hint to an iris leaf, the famous flower of Florence, is delicately woven into the 'r' of the lettering. When the logo is used without the icon, the iris leaf nods to the botanical theme of the museum.
The icon of the logo is a stylized root illustration. While researching this project i found a myriad different types of plants that have historical "roots' (pun intended) at the garden. Simply showing a solitaire leaf or flower felt too simple to honor the hundreds of species of plants. The roots speak to all plants living in the museum.
Branding
The other branding elements of the design create a cohesive identity. The colors are intentionally from colors in the garden and in the city of Florence. The typeface is refined, yet has a natural feeling with rounded, uneven serifs and organic apertures. Lastly, the patterns are styled in an Art Nouveau design. Having subtle Art Nouveau graphics felt unique for the medieval city museum and appropriate for the subject matter.
Signage
The previous signage found throughout the garden was inconsistent and unclear. The new design carries the "Artemisia Green" throughout the museum signage and way finding. The graphic pattern design is expanded to include illustrations of the plants for easy identification. The outdoor signage is concise and straight-forward, clearly indicating that it is wheelchair accessible by using the new accessible logo.
Map
After physically mapping out the museum layout, the map design accurately represent the landmarks of the garden. The map has been designed in English, Italian, and braille for the most accessibility. Ideally, the map would be digitally extended to other languages in order for high accessibility.
The map has been intentionally design for those who are visually impaired, included those specifically disabled by blindness and color blindness. The braille map is situated in the front of the garden with raised braille lettering for optimal accessibility early in the journey through the museum. The contrast on the maps has been permanently modified for color blindness as well.
Ticket and Brochure
in the lens of sustainability, museum tickets can be quite wasteful (unless you're like me who keeps them as mementos). I designed the new tickets to have a life after it's initial use of being an entry ticket. The new tickets are created to love on as bookmarks after the visitors leave the garden. Printing with a soy or vegetable-based ink would allow the tickets to easily recycled or composted after it leaves the museum. italy has a robust waste system that includes a separate waste removal dedicated to organic material. This ticket would be able to join the other organic waste.
The brochure is a tri-fold design. I chose this design of folding because it is the most common form of folding. Those with physical disabilities can use these easily. There is also a digital brochure option for online viewing. The content of the brochure is chosen and written by me. I selected sections of the brochure that I think are necessary to highlight. The conservation and sustainability of the botanical garden and the accessibility efforts are clearly noted in the brochure. I also decided to highlight. the important landmarks of the garden. Important featured plants were going unseen due to lack of information and signage.
Giftshop Goodies
Lastly, everyone loves a good museum gift shop. ButI asked myself how I can reduce the amount of waste and items that might be thrown away soon after a visit to the garden. I focused the goodies on things that can be reused or encourage less consumption in the future. For example, I designed a reusable ceramic water bottle, seed packets for planting a garden, a counter-top compost bin, and beeswax food seals. The items are few but intentional.
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