Explorers have used the stars to navigate their way for centuries. This is the origin of our name, one of the brightest constellations in the night sky.
Our Guiding Principle
We believe that effective wayfinding and environmental graphic design contributes to the operational and strategic goals of our clients. We strive to make places more navigable, organizations more approachable and services more accessible.
Leading the Way
Since 1979 Cygnus has designed visual communications for the built environment that inform, direct, and evoke. We combine a 40-year history with national reach to offer a unique combination of team experience, range of skillsets, and project diversity.
Your Visitors, Our Clients
User-focused and client-centred, we empathize with our clients and the needs of their users. We help you meet operational objectives while ensuring spaces are intuitive, friendly, and approachablefor a diverse range of potential visitors.
We bring 40 years of history to our work.
In the broadest sense, our work is about developing and managing communication strategies for the built environment. This work encompasses a range of distinct but closely interrelated fields, including:wayfinding programs, signage standards, placemaking, environmental graphics, interpretive programs, and donor recognition.
Forty years of partnerships with our clients, project stakeholders, facilities managers, architectural consultants, construction vendors, and technical specialists have afforded us a unique understanding of the entire life cycle of a project. We integrate strategic goals and design values with our extensive knowledge and expertise in materials and implementation. We consider the importance of community, architecture, landscape and identity alongside cost, maintenance, and longevity.
We make places more navigable.
Our work for complex architectural environments has helped to decrease frustration when entering and exiting facilities, lessen reliance on support staff to provide directions, reduce travel times, and contribute to a positive visitor experience where navigation is linked to discovery, exploration, and action.
We make organizations more approachable.
Signage is an important place of interaction between your brand and your customers. We activate your brand across your site, and our work ensures consistency across multiple locations, from the beginning of the journey to the destination.
We make services more accessible.
By using wayfinding programs, our work ensures that visitors have a smooth transition between exploring a space and accessing the services that our clients are providing. Helping people navigate their way through an environment adds to the value of the overall experience and architecture within the area.
We combine a local approach
with the support of a national team.
We are a group of project managers, planners, visual designers, and technical engineers. We assemble project teams based on the best expertise for each client’s project needs. Our collaborative group model ensures teams work together effortlessly, wherever projects are based.
Gordon Milne
President & CEO
A pioneer in Canada’s signage industry, Gordon is a champion of predictable processes that lead to measured outcomes for our clients. For 40 years Gordon has led an approach that has transformed Canada’s signage industry from supplier to consulting partners. His long-term vision has led Cygnus’ evolution from sign manufacturer to recognized leaders in sign implementation, wayfinding, environmental graphic design, and brand activation for large-scale environments.
Lindsay Turner
VP DesignCalgary, AB
lindsay@cygnus.group
403-371-2101
Jonathan Picklyk
Design DirectorToronto, ON
jonathan@cygnus.group
416-728-3847
Andrew Thompstone
Project DirectorVancouver, BC
andrew@cygnus.group
604-261-3330
Michelle Parcels
Resource DirectorVictoria, BC
michelle@cygnus.group
778-265-9100
“We have benefitted greatly from the collaboration with Cygnus. Recognizing that how people find their way is part of the care we provide rather than something that happens before and after we meet them is now fundamental to our approach. I don’t believe we would have made this shift in thinking without a systematic approach to reviewing and improving our practice.”
Your Visitors, Our Clients
Success for our clients and their visitors results from anintegrated project approach.
1
APPROACH
As a national team, we have the range of capabilities and expertise to tackle each phase of a project from planning and design, to delivery.
2
SERVICES
We are a wayfinding and environmental graphic design group with expertise across placemaking, donor recognition, and brand activation.
3
GOALS
Our work improves the way visitors experience spaces by ensuring they are informed, promoting discovery, anddecreasing travel times.
4
OUTCOMES
Improved visitor experiences create success for our clients through optimal product and service delivery and better operational efficiency.
We partner with Canada’s leading corporations, public institutions, and national organizations.
