Signs and routes, considered before they are drawn.
Orchard Board makes wayfinding systems: signs, maps, markers, and the routes between them. The work starts with questions about how a place moves and where it hesitates. Drawings follow, then materials, then the slow fitting of letterforms to walls and posts. Nothing here is rushed. Every mark is checked against the room it will stand in.
The room holds drafting tables, flat files, and shelves of sample letters cut from different materials. Light comes from one side, steady through the day, useful for checking contrast and shadow. Nothing decorative sits on the walls except test proofs, pinned in rows, waiting to be measured against daylight.
The studio keeps paper stocks of different weights, inks mixed by hand, and a press used for proofs before anything is fabricated. Materials are chosen for how they age outdoors: fading, wear, and weather are part of the design, not an afterthought. Every material is tested before it is specified.
Every commission opens with questions, not sketches. What does a visitor need to know, and when. Where does confusion start, and why. Only once these are answered does a pencil move. Drawings emerge slowly, tested against real walking paths, corners, and sightlines, until the sign says only what is needed.
Nothing goes to print until the drawing has been left alone for a week. Lettering is drawn by hand first, even when it will be set from type later. Every job begins with questions, and the answers are pinned above the drawing board. A brief is read three times: once quickly, once slowly, once out loud.
Offcuts of good paper go into a box for trials and small cards. Proofs are pulled in one colour before any second colour is mixed. Type is kept in cases by size, and a missing sort is noted the day it is missed. The press is cleaned at the end of each day whether or not it was used.
The studio is one long room with the press at the far end, away from the drawing board. Shelves of type and paper line one wall; the other wall is kept bare for pinning up work. The windows are opened at the end of the day to let the ink smell out. North light falls on the drawing board and never on the press.