Shane Durnford Studio
Place Identity & Environmental Design
A Practice of Jayce Fox
Every Place has an Identity
Whether it's a village main street, a family farm, a business, or a community, the strongest identities are discovered rather than invented.
For more than thirty years I've helped people uncover what makes a place distinctive and express it through thoughtful design—from logos and visual identities to place markers, environmental graphics, and a select number of commissioned entrance pieces.
Identity discovered through place
A meaningful identity does more than make something recognizable. It creates a feeling of belonging.
Each project begins by looking closely—at the history, architecture, landscape, people, and stories that give a place its character. From that understanding, a visual language begins to emerge.
The result may take the form of a symbol, a sign, a gateway, a streetscape element, or an integrated family of pieces. Whatever its form, the work is designed to feel inevitable: distinctive, enduring, and deeply at home in its surroundings.
Areas of Practice
Place Identity
Visual identities for villages, destinations, neighbourhoods, organizations, and properties—developed from the character of the place rather than imposed upon it.
A limited number of distinctive signs, gateways, entrance pieces, donor installations, and environmental graphics conceived as lasting elements within their surroundings.
Signs & Placemarkers
Logos, symbols, lettering, colour, and visual systems that express the essential character of a business, organization, or place with clarity and restraint.
Identity Design
Creative direction and consultation for municipalities, business owners, architects, fabricators, and sign studios seeking greater visual cohesion, distinction, and connection to place.
Design Consultation
Selected Work
The work shown here spans more than three decades, but it is connected by a consistent belief:
Good design does not merely attract attention. It deepens our relationship with a place.
Bank Café
"Henry Beston, the writer and naturalist, wrote, “Poetry is as necessary to comprehension as science." Jayce’s work reflects, even underlines, this notion. The mechanics of proportion, color, and technique become something greater when infused with the understanding of time and space, and Jayce has discovered a way to live and work from that perspective."
— John McIltrot, Signcraft Magazine
