Think about the last major built environment project you worked on.
The sustainability conversation probably touched the mechanical systems. The facade. The furniture. The flooring. Maybe even the paint.
Now think about the signage program. The wayfinding. The graphics.
Did anyone ask what those materials were doing to the carbon footprint?
If the answer is no, you’re not alone. Across the industry — at firms large and small, on projects worth millions — the signage, wayfinding, and EGD scopes have quietly been getting a pass on sustainability. Not because anyone decided it didn’t matter. But because no one thought to ask.
Peter Muller — Sr. Design Manager, Associate at Gensler — asked. And what he found — and what he built because of it — is something every EGD, signage & wayfinding professional, project manager, and brand environment leader should know about.
Everyone Had Sustainability Goals. Nobody Was Looking at the Signs.
For three years, Peter Muller led sustainability for Gensler’s Brand practice area — the roughly 250+ person global team responsible for EGD, signage, wayfinding, and visual identity.
He got there through a path nobody would have predicted: a history degree from Western Washington University, newspaper ad sales at Seattle Weekly, a stint at Western Neon learning signage fabrication and installation from the ground up, and eventually a project management role at Gensler that kept expanding. Along the way, he was asked to lead sustainability across the entire Brand practice area at a firmwide, global level.
And the thing that struck him early on wasn’t a specific project or a particular client. It was a gap in the conversation.
Gensler has major sustainability commitments. So do most of their clients. The built environment industry talks constantly about sustainable buildings, energy performance, and responsible materials.
But in signage, wayfinding, and graphics? That conversation was almost entirely absent.
“No one was really talking about sustainability in our space,” Peter says. “I think because it was just small compared to everything else in the built environment, it just got overlooked.”
He understood the logic. You’re not going to compare the embodied carbon of a signage package to a 40-story tower.
But that logic is exactly what keeps the blind spot alive.
When you isolate signage and evaluate it on its own terms, the potential for improvement is enormous. The barriers to entry are low. The investment is a fraction of what it takes to overhaul a building’s energy systems.
“It’s not just the slices of bread,” Peter says. “It’s the crumbs too.”
And there’s a dimension to this that anyone working in branded environments should feel in their gut.
Signage is often the most intimate touchpoint between a brand and the people who interact with it. It’s the element that can literally say the company’s name.
If a company claims sustainability but its signage program hasn’t been touched — same materials, same processes, no questions asked — that’s a gap between what a brand says and what it does.
Peter decided to close it.
One Client Question. No Industry Answer.
About six years ago, a Gensler client with ambitious sustainability goals asked Peter’s team something nobody in the industry had a good answer to:
Could they quantify the carbon impact of the signage they were designing?
Peter had been thinking about this. He knew that embodied carbon data — the CO₂ tied to a material’s extraction, manufacturing, transportation, and waste — existed for many common signage materials. Aluminum. Steel. Acrylic. Vinyl. Wood.
This data lives in something called an Environmental Product Declaration, or EPD — a third-party reviewed disclosure that functions like a nutrition label for a material’s environmental footprint across its full lifecycle.
The data was out there. But it was reported in different units, and impossible to compare.
You couldn’t put two materials side by side and make an informed decision.
So Peter assembled a team — people who could do what he calls “the crazy math” — and they started pulling EPDs, extracting data, converting to a consistent unit of measurement, and standardizing everything into a single database.
For the first time, you could compare the embodied carbon of signage materials apples to apples. And make real-time design decisions rooted in real data.
And the data didn’t just confirm what people already assumed. It challenged it.
That’s one of the most powerful things about the calculator — it pushes back on preconceived notions about what’s actually sustainable. The material you’ve always thought of as the “green” choice? The data might tell a different story. The spec you’ve been defaulting to for years? There might be an option with a fraction of the carbon footprint that performs just as well.
Without a tool like this, those assumptions go unchecked. With it, every material choice becomes a conversation grounded in evidence instead of intuition.
The Signage Carbon Calculator was born.
A Tool Only Works If the Workflow Does
Version one of the Carbon Calculator was a spreadsheet. That alone was a breakthrough.
But Peter and his team kept pushing. The calculator has evolved through multiple iterations, and the latest is the most ambitious: integrating it directly into Autodesk Revit, the 3D modeling and design software used across architecture and interior design to plan and coordinate building projects.
If you work on large-scale, complex, signage & wayfinding projects, you know why this matters.
The best sustainability tool in the world is useless if it lives in a separate file that nobody opens when the deadline hits.
For large-scale signage projects — airports, corporate campuses, healthcare systems — the work is commonly being modeled in Autodesk Revit because of the sheer volume and complexity involved. By embedding the carbon calculator directly into that environment, Peter’s team put the data where decisions are already being made.
No separate spreadsheet. No friction.
And because it lives in Autodesk Revit, the calculator isn’t limited to signage specialists anymore. Any architect or interior designer at the firm can use it to evaluate signage and wayfinding carbon on their projects.
That’s the move that takes this from a niche tool to a firmwide capability.
The results speak for themselves. Peter says it’s routine to identify up to 80% savings in embodied carbon against what a client was previously specifying or what the industry standard dictates.
Eighty percent. On programs most people weren’t even thinking about.
The Crumbs Are Where the Opportunity Is
Peter’s work resonates beyond Gensler because the blind spot he identified isn’t unique to one firm.
Everyone has sustainability goals. Very few are applying them to signage.
That’s the gap. And the way Peter closed it points a direction forward for the entire industry.
Start with what’s already available. Many material manufacturers already publish EPDs. Start collecting them for the materials you spec most often. Even without a formal tool, understanding the relative carbon impact of your go-to materials can change how you make recommendations.
Don’t wait for it to feel big enough. An 80% reduction in embodied carbon for a signage program is significant on its own terms. And those smaller wins are often what build momentum — the low-hanging fruit that gets clients and teams excited to pursue bigger sustainability commitments. Peter sees this as one of the most compelling parts of the argument: signage sustainability isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s a gateway. A lower-investment, lower-barrier entry point that can spark excitement and lead to much bigger commitments across a project or an organization.
Put it in the workflow, not next to it. The most important thing Peter’s team did wasn’t building the calculator — it was embedding it inside Autodesk Revit. When sustainability is the default rather than the exception, it doesn’t get cut when timelines tighten.
And remember that this work belongs to everyone in the process. Peter’s sustainability impact came through building systems and operational tools, not through the design process alone. Project managers, production leads, account managers, fabricators — anyone who touches how EGD work gets done has a lever to pull here.
Peter’s career itself is proof of that. A history major who sold newspaper ads, learned signage from the fabrication floor, and followed his curiosity all the way to leading sustainability for one of the world’s largest design firms.
“Let’s rally around that as an industry,” he says. “Designers and fabricators and printers and general contractors. Let’s make sure that we’re doing even the smallest things in a very sustainable way.”
Because sometimes the smallest touchpoints have the greatest impact. Sometimes the biggest gains are hiding in the places nobody thought to measure. And sometimes the signs that carry a brand’s name are exactly where its sustainability story should start.
Your Sustainability Commitment Extends to Every Surface.
At SuperGraphics, we’re inspired by leaders like Peter who are proving that sustainability and exceptional brand experiences aren’t trade-offs — they’re the same conversation. As Peter himself put it: “There’s just not nearly enough fabricators doing what SuperGraphics is doing.”
From PVC-free materials to our EcoFormat® circular recycling process, we help brands bring their sustainability commitments to life across every printed surface. Because if your signage carries your name, it should carry your values too.
Curious how SuperGraphics can support your sustainable signage and EGD programs?
