Wayfinding systems
A wayfinding programme fails for one of two reasons. Either the signs are hard to read, which is a design problem and the easier of the two. Or they are perfectly legible and still send people the wrong way, which is a naming problem and is where most of the real work sits.
We start with names, not signs
The first deliverable on a wayfinding project is not a drawing. It is a nomenclature study: a list of every destination in the building, the name it will be given on signage, and the names it is known by internally. These are rarely the same. A department that calls itself Ambulatory Procedures may be the place patients were told to find as Day Surgery, and the sign has to carry the visitor's word rather than the org chart's.
We gather that by walking the building with the people who answer the questions — front desk, security, volunteers — and writing down what visitors actually ask. It takes a couple of days and it prevents the most expensive category of error, which is a hundred correct signs pointing at a name nobody recognises.
Then the schedules
Nomenclature settled, we produce a sign-type schedule defining each family of sign in the programme, a location plan keyed to the floor plans, and a message schedule that states the exact copy for every individual sign. The message schedule is what gets signed off, and it is what fabrication builds from. Approving copy at the schedule stage rather than the drawing stage is what keeps revisions cheap.
Modular hardware
Departments move and get renamed, so the hardware assumes it. Directories and directionals are built as an extruded aluminium frame carrying replaceable inserts, so a change is a new insert rather than a new sign. Inserts are digitally printed and can be produced in single quantities, which means a client can order one without a setup charge.
For campuses we hold the extrusion profile and colour formula on file, so signage added five years later matches what is already installed. Several of our healthcare clients are now on their third phase against a system first specified in 2012.
Exterior wayfinding
Vehicular directionals answer a different question, because a driver reads at speed and has one glance. Copy height is set by viewing distance rather than by panel proportion, destinations are limited to what can be read in that glance, and the decision point governs placement — a sign that appears after the turn is worse than no sign.
- Vehicular directionals, entry and exit identification
- Parking level, zone and row identification
- Building and pedestrian directories, campus maps
- Interior directionals, room identification, egress signage
- Regulatory and accessible-route signage
Interior room identification usually has to meet accessibility requirements — see ADA interior signage. For a worked example at scale, read the Riverside Medical Center and Marren City Schools write-ups.