LOUGHBOROUGH • TOWN Observatory

The TOWN Observatory is a dynamic portal providing access to four co-created digital platforms that display information about the town of Loughborough in the United Kingdom. It launched on 10 April 2025 after a period of two years in development between researchers in the Schools of Design and Creative Arts (SDCA) and Architecture, Building and […]

SOUTH AFRICA • Memorialising Mandela in the Metropolis

What might we expect to learn about a person from visiting a place named after them? Is naming an urban place simply an act of commemoration, or could such locations ‘say’ more? Inspired by initial discussions with the Nelson Mandela Foundation in South Africa, through the synthesis of cultural heritage and graphic form the Memorialising […]

CHINA • Repositioning Graphic Heritage

What new perspectives can graphic design contribute to design for urban heritage? How can participatory design approaches enhance urban graphic heritage for greater social cohesion? Read further about our response to these questions. This Newton Fund project, co-ordinated by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in co-operation with the UNESCO Creative City (Shanghai) Promotion Office, […]

AUSTRALIA • Adelaide’s graphic heritage: The quintessential contested colonial city

What constitutes Adelaide’s heritage? How is heritage conveyed across various scales of the Adelaide city region? This project utilises graphic heritage to highlight the contested identity of Adelaide as a quintessential colonial city. Funded through the University of South Australia, SIDA Foundation, and The David Roche Foundation Curatorial Research Fellowship, a wide range of activities […]

BRAZIL • Sustaining São Paulo through waste collection

Collaboration between Loughborough University and University of São Paulo explored the central role graphic images play in the work of waste collectors in São Paulo. The research examined the idea of waste as a symbolic resource. The project culminated in a photo-documentation of the site of COOPAMARE (the Cooperative of Autonomous Paper, Cardboard, Scraps and […]

CREATIVE CITIES • Design outreach: Utilising graphic heritage for heritage interpretation

This six-month scoping project with United Kingdom National Commission for UNESCO (UKNC) examined the concept of graphic heritage to assess how it might be a helpful tool for UNESCO designations for overcoming sustainable development challenges specific to urban environments and world heritage sites more generally. The project received funding from Research England: Higher Education Innovation […]

SPORT • Graphic heritage calling: The temporal and spatial historic experience of the Wembley Stadium and Wembley Park milieu

As a ‘spectacular’ sporting heritage space Wembley Stadium and its setting have been recently celebrated after a centenary of sport and entertainment since its inauguration in 1923. This paper examines the recent redevelopment and design of Wembley Stadium in Wembley Park to depict how the heritage credentials of the area and the intangible nature of […]

URBAN PLANNING • Colouring Loughborough

Data visualisation for digital planning is the driver in this collaborative project with The Alan Turing Institute’s Colouring Cities Research Programme (CCRP).  The Impact Hub has assembled an interdisciplinary team from urban planning, architecture, spatial data science, urban design, and graphic design to create a sub-regional town observatory based on the Colouring London platform created […]

STANDARDISATION: Graphic standards in graphic heritage: Scope, scale, and unity through multiplicity in Islamic design

The concept of graphic standards is well-known across several disciplines. In design, it is most substantively understood in architecture, but its American origins present a limited aesthetic scope that favours classical architectural norms that overlook non-Western architectural traditions. This paper explores their relevance concerning urban heritage and the emerging concept of graphic heritage. It explores […]

URBAN COLOUR • A linguistic approach to urban color design and research — Exploring Jianming Song’s methodologies

The development of urban color planning and design has evolved alongside massive urbanization in China over the past two decades. In this field, Jianming Song has become one of the most profound practitioners, having carried out hundreds of urban color projects since the turn of the millennium. This study aims to answer the question: What […]

RETAIL • Food’s urban graphic heritage in Walthamstow

Food’s material and symbolic values are central to cultural heritage. Urban foodscapes are dense in graphic communication, with memories and meanings that connect us with place often triggered by food’s graphic heritage, for example, through fascia signs, packaging, branding, patterns, and lettering. The focus of this project is on everyday grass roots manifestations of food’s […]

SPORT • Kissing the badge: Club crests or corporate logos?

Football is big business. Yet for most top clubs in Europe and particularly those in the English Premier League, match day income is not the core part of their business. To improve their earning power, clubs increasingly operate as brands. With much of the brand experience delivered in digital form, many clubs are updating traditional […]

PHOTOGRAPHY • Photomaps

Multiple viewpoint photo composites, or photomaps, are commonplace, but critically and popularly overlooked. They bring together principles from information graphics and geographic visualisation and combine them with the image-making technologies of photography. Well known examples include the ubiquitous panorama and aerial composites such as Google Map’s Satellite View, with a history that extends back to […]

PLACE BRANDING • Tracing Shanghai: A graphic heritage and creative industry education collaboration

Tracing Shanghai is a collaborative educational initiative between Loughborough University School of Design and Creative Arts, and Tongji University College of Design and Innovation.  As part of the collaborative creative industries dimension of the Repositioning Graphic Heritage research project, the initiative encourages designers to be inspired and look at the city as a source of visual-aesthetic inspiration by […]

FASCISM • Designing the Latina Landscape

What role did design play in the creation of the Latina Province in Fascist Italy during the early twentieth century? This pilot study explores the integrated design perspectives that contributed to the creation of the Latina Province (formerly Littoria Province), Italy, in the early twentieth century. The visual character of the written discourse, visual images, […]

URBAN COLOUR • Colour as Place Identity: A Case Study of Leicester

How does colour contribute to constructing place identity in urban environments? What frameworks can help to define colour identity of place? Why are multiple perspectives important for defining the colour identity of place? How can we use the visual ethnographic approach to enhance the understanding of colour identity? In order to answer these research questions, […]

MONUMENTS • The Anti-War Memorial

Through case study analysis of World War One remembrance activities, this research examines the intrinsic politics of war monuments. The military executions of World War One—in which hundreds of soldiers were court-martialled and executed for cowardice and desertion—remain controversial, without consensus or established collective narrative. This research examines historic negotiations with the subject, and notes […]

SIGNAGE • City of Westminster street nameplate, London

The creation and subsequent appropriation of the City of Westminster street nameplate design in London shows how urban graphic objects might evolve to serve a multitude of purposes. These range from the utility of labelling roads to the demarcation of London’s theatre district and local immigrant community, commercial merchandising, heritage signifier, to cultural expression as […]

URBAN COLOUR • Colour in Urban Places: A Case Study of Leicester City Football Club Blue

This project presents an empirical investigation on the process of place-making through colour design at a local level. The guiding research question is how does colour contribute to constructing place identity in urban environments?  The research comprises a case study inquiry of the Leicester City Football Club (LCFC) in the United Kingdom that directs the […]

URBAN COLOUR • Wayfinding in Beijing

Why and how are the local and global connected in urban graphic wayfinding systems? How have the meaning, function and appearance of Beijing’s graphic wayfinding systems changed since 1840? What role did Beijing’s graphic wayfinding systems play in shaping Beijing’s identities at different periods? What is the complex and manifold relationship between the local and […]