BETHESDA, MD.-A comprehensive new environmental graphics system, including wayfinding, directional signage, banner graphics, and interpretive panels for historical reference, is now in place at Jamestown Settlement history museum near Williamsburg, Va. Designed by Bethesda, Md.-based Gallagher & Associates, the graphics program was created and installed over a span of six years and completed in time for the 400th anniversary in 2007 of the founding of Jamestown , America ’s first permanent settlement.

Gallagher & Associates has been working with the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, the Virginia agency that operates Jamestown Settlement, since the spring of 2000 to create a master plan for the site’s wayfinding and interpretive path system, indoor galleries and educational facilities, and outdoor exhibits and discovery stations. The environmental graphics program was conceived as part of the foundation’s ambitious 1997 facilities master plan, which detailed several site improvements to be completed in time for Jamestown ’s quadricentennial and the 50th anniversary of the museum, also in 2007.

Gallagher & Associates used a palette of natural materials and colors for the new signage, drawing upon historical references and cues for the design and fabrication. “This new system takes its inspiration from the skills, tools, and materials that were available to the original settlers,” says Patrick J. Gallagher, principal with Gallagher & Associates. “This is a rustic woodland site, and the equipment and skills of that era were somewhat primitive. While we were not replicating materials and construction techniques specifically, we wanted to create a system that was appropriate to both the natural setting and the time period.”

The design team selected earth tones such as terra cotta, yellow, and daub for the overall palette, and worked primarily with iron and cedar wood. Several of the accents and colors used in the signs also relate to the nautical details and patterning found on the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery, re-creations of the English ships that first brought settlers to Virginia in 1607.

The signage system includes new illustrative maps and reproductions of historic paintings and colonial imagery throughout the settlement’s re-created Powhatan Indian village, the ships, and the colonial fort. Several interpretive panels are positioned at the discovery stations located along a pathway that winds through a riverfront discovery area. The stations provide information about European, Virginia Indian, and African economic activities, including navigation, boatbuilding, fishing, commodities, and trade.

Gallagher & Associates was responsible for the design of the system’s main identity pieces; interior and exterior building signage; site signage, including directionals for vehicular and pedestrian traffic and trail markers; interpretive signage; and regulatory signage.

In addition to the new wayfinding and interpretive path system, highlights of the facility improvements include a new 75,000-square-foot structure housing a theater, a special exhibition gallery, and permanent exhibition galleries. The theater and special exhibition wing opened in the spring of 2004 and the permanent galleries opened in October 2006. Gallagher & Associates, which specializes in museum design, also designed all of the exhibit galleries.

Gallagher & Associates has extensive experience in creating environmental graphics programs and exhibits within historic settings, and specializes in integrating signage and displays into a historic framework while also showcasing buildings and grounds as artifacts. In addition to the work at Jamestown Settlement, the firm is currently designing an environmental graphics program for the Gettysburg National Military Park and the Borough of Gettysburg, Penn.