The Nordstrom Sign Program
A five-year self-initiated project to improve function, perception, and design of signing program for 123 Nordstrom stores.
My Role: Graphic Design Manager
2015: The Sign Shop
As the incoming Graphic Design Manager for Nordstrom’s Visual Merchandising, I inherited a program known as The Sign Shop that had many inconsistencies and an outdated guide. With downtime between team projects, I explored ways of improving the library one department at a time. This included defining new components in the system, streamlining content, and creating a library of documentation to quickly understand usage.
Men’s Department Sign System
2017: Conflicting direction
I examined how signs were used in-store, documented installation, and made notes on best practices. I did an audit of the template library and worked with engineering to identify common elements and quantity of usage over time. I also partnered with Store Design on implementing sign holders for new stores. I learned they believed signs were primarily used to elevate brands and that paper signs were less significant since they were used for temporary marketing placements. Stores, on the other hand, relied on paper signs for promotions which were an integral part of their business. I asked the question: How can we create uniformity in our signing system to elevate both brands and promotions in an easy-to-use system that looked good every day?
A sample of promotional campaign signage from 2017.
2018: The Nordstrom Sign Program
Establishing the design language for The Nordstrom Sign Program was as much about design as perception. I had to change the mind-set from a commodity-driven “sign shop” to a design service model that was home to a sign ordering website. However, the first step was taking all of our learning and cleaning up the program.
Design Principles
Leadership had been talking about The Nordstrom Pillars in meetings for years, but it was never clear on how these pillars informed design. Taking these pillars, my team and I brainstormed keywords that would define the principles that we would use as the direction in our everyday work.
Elements
Once we defined the principles, the fun began. Color, typography, spacing, hierarchy, flow, and much more all had to be revisited. Redundancies and inconsistencies throughout the signing system were initially hard to deal with, but we were able to reduce the number of templates by refining existing templates to serve more needs. This included a simple graphic update to templates for marketing promotions that reduced the amount of engineering time for campaigns. I also partnered with store design to create holders for paper inserts that aligned with existing fixture finishes.
A sample of sign inserts and holders with application.
2020: Leaving it better than I found it.
In the end, I was able to improve the program overall with fewer templates, more flexibility, a well-documented guide, sign holders that matched store fixture concepts, and a team that could support changing needs using informed design principles.
