The Right Direction: Intuitive Approaches to Wayfinding
by Wayne Hunt
Parking is a big part of urban life. We can’t go anywhere in the city without undergoing the parking experience. Whether above grade of subterranean, speed ramp or double helix, parking environments make up a large part of the city experience. With intuitive and creative wayfinding design, parking can become a fun and pleasant part of urban outings.
PARKING IS YOUR FRONT DOOR
Bring visitors through a positive environment.
If first impressions are lasting impressions, why do so many important and distinguished institutions often greet their guests with dismal and challenging parking experiences?
Unfortunately, just because you’re going to a great opera doesn’t mean you can avoid dealing a confusing, badly-signed, and under-lit parking garage.
A large majority of parking venues for sophisticated and upscale destinations are adjoined by low-bid, generic-parking structures—structures that were designed to maximize car storage efficiency and minimize construction costs, to the detriment of more people-oriented amenities.
As the beginning of the visitor experience, parking one’s car should be made as pleasant as possible. While good lighting and ventilation are key, so are clearly communicating orientation, directions, and safety information.
DRIVERS AND PEDESTRIANS
Different audiences, different needs. When talking about parking structures, most of us primarily think of drivers and cars, not pedestrians. Much thought and planning goes into such issues as lane width, stall count, and ramp angles, but too little energy is spent on pedestrian issues. However, once parked, every driver in every garage becomes a pedestrian. And each pedestrian negotiates the structure twice—once from the parked car to exit the garage, and again returning to the car.
An obligation of good parking signage is the clear separation of driver and pedestrian information. Directions for walking to the elevator should not have the same look as lane directional sign. The best solution is a single visual language—color, type size, and shape—for all vehicular directional signs, and a different design aesthetic for those on foot. Walkers need the assurance provided by consistent but differentiated messages relating to car location, elevator placement, and security. Drivers, being in motion, require very simple and bold information, usually with only two primary messages: Park and Exit.
Often, vehicular signs are bold and neutral in color, while signs for pedestrian are more detailed and colorful. It is preferable to have a throughout-the-garage dark neutral color, such as dark green, blue, brown, or gray with white letters for drivers. Vehicular signs are not the place for floor level color-coding. Typography should be white for maximum contrast. This light-on-dark approach is preferable in today’s largely under-lit parking structures. However, if budget allows for the installation of sign specific lighting, a surprising effective result can be achieved with dark letters on white backgrounds. Certain parking at Los Angeles LAX airport features a light-projected-on-the-sign-face approach that’s quite effective.
Pedestrian signs allow much more latitude, and open up the possibility to use color, illustration, and more design detail. For example, entire walls can be decorated and enhanced around the elevators.
Names, Numbers, and Icons
Clear nomenclature: Memorable images make a difference. At a famous Las Vegas hotel, Level Three parking aligns with Level Two in the casino. A major Los Angeles area hospital features parking with two Level One floors. A theme park structure inexplicably uses numerals as floor zone designations, creating confusion with floor numbers: “Did we park in Zone 3 on Floor 4, or was it Zone 4 on Floor 3?” Sometimes, G means Garage, other times it means Ground Floor. P usually stands for Parking, but occasionally represents Plaza Level. This is not entertainment—it’s confusion. Such are some of the counter-intuitive nomenclature approaches seen in today’s parking environments.
Conversely, logical, predictable, and intuitive naming and numbering can go a long way toward building customer satisfaction. For instance, in the reworking of the massive MGM Grand garage, the largest in Las Vegas, we subdivided the long floors into single-row, alpha-named zones, starting with the A zone closest to the hotel entrance. In our project at the Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles, we argued successfully that the level with the main entrance on the inclined site be called Level One, and that the other entrance—including parking, even though it is at grade too—be labeled Ground Level, with the parking levels below names P1, P2, etc.
Color Coding
“We parked on chartreuse, not celery.” Color is a powerful communication tool. Because color differentiates otherwise similar things and can establish subliminal memory awareness, color is perfect for use in parking structures. Supplementing parking level numbers with distinctive colors reinforces identity and recall.
The most effective color coding systems use nameable colors for conversational reinforcement. “We parked on Blue, not Green.” Unfortunately, there are only five universally nameable colors, red, blue, green, yellow and orange. Purple is good, but is often verbally confused with lavender. However, many designers of parking graphics prefer richer or more interesting non-primary colors, which is sufficient as long as they are clearly different from each other and conversational naming is not a priority.
In additional to signs, color can be used on entire walls and elevator enclosures to further distinguish levels in a structure. The graphic differences in large amounts of color work as a powerful reinforcement of place.
ICONS AND MEMORY DEVICES
It’s a symbolic world, after all. Just as colors can differentiate, so can icons, or, more correctly pictographs. Our culture is increasingly visual and picture oriented: Nike signs its ads with only a logo, and symbols guide us through airports. Just take a look at your laptop screen and count how many pictographs are used for words. So it follows that visual symbols can help distinguish levels in a complex parking structure. Simple, almost childlike objects that are universally recognized are preferred. Seven or eight floors of similar looking fruits and vegetables may not appear different enough. Animals, toys, sea creatures, and even classic movie stars, have been effectively used to differentiate parking levels. Again, universally recognized symbols with pronounceable names are best.
Often, a project has a theme, or one can be adopted. Parking for Granpark, a large mixed-use project in Tokyo, incorporates colorful icons of garden insets that support the project’s garden theme. At Paris Las Vegas, an image for each floor is based on famous French landmarks, such as the Eiffel Tower and the Paris Opera House.
An additional benefit can come from combining alpha naming with pictographs; that is, selecting objects whose names begin with sequential letters of the alphabet. In this way, parkers can understand their relative location in a complex environment. The design solution for zone naming at the immense parking lot at the Los Angeles Zoo utilizes a sequence of icons: Aardvark, Baboon, Camel, Donkey, etc.
However, pictographs have limits to their communication ability. As a language system, even the best sets of pictographs require a learning “investment” on the part of the users. They work best as a redundant second or third layer of information. Simply put, good pictographs are most effective as supplements to names, numbers, and colors.
“LET’S HIDE THE ELEVATOR.”
Confusing environments need many signs. If all garages had central, highly-visible elevators, there would be few pedestrian signs. Unfortunately, development constraints and adjacency issues usually lead to elevators being places off to the side or, even worse, in a corner of the structure. Even when architects put the elevator core in a visible and convenient place, they often position the elevator doors out of sight from the parking aisles. The rule of thumb is: If you can’t see the elevator doors, you need a big sign.
Visible elevators are not only important for pedestrians, they also useful to pre-informing drivers as they circulate up or down the floors before parking. Seeing the elevators in advance aids in understanding the environment and helps establish the pedestrian circulation process. But, because the location of many elevators is not self evident, enhancing the signage, colors, and other graphics can help to actually create a “place” or destination.
Lighting can also play an important role in wayfinding. People intuitively move toward light. Therefore, enhancing the lighting around the elevator core not only improves safety, but also communicates a destination. Upgraded lighting can also be deployed to mark pedestrian paths.
INSIDE THE ELEVATOR
The best signage information systems “speak” with consistency and are very thorough. Extending the sign language—names, colors, pictographs—into the elevator cab is also important for effective wayfinding in parking environments. Call buttons can be color-coded, and key destinations, such as the Lobby or Casino, can be marked next to the buttons. Additional tools, such as directory maps, also work well inside elevators.
DOWN UNDER
While most above-ground structures cause a bit of disorientation, going underground multiplies disorientation and completely separates us from the natural environmental cues of sunlight direction and geographical features, which somehow are missed less in an above-ground setting.
Below-ground parking requires especially strong and redundant signage. Floor colors should be bright and used generously. Zone numbers need to be large and clear; elevators must stand out.
ON THE SURFACE
New signage problems are encountered in the design of sprawling and often featureless surface parking lots of shopping centers and other major destinations. For drivers, the two main messages of Park and Exit remain the primary signs. However, for pedestrians, communicating location and orientation needs to be focused on large, distance-viewable zone markers.
Paths to the exit are often not a priority, as the destination itself, whether a shopping center building or an airport terminal, is likely always in view. However, the previous discussion of colors, names, and pictographs applies for surface lots, with the recommendation that systems with strong sequential elements, alpha or numeric, be used.
There are many ways to design and implement effective signage in parking environments, and not all situations are alike. However, logical, intuitive, and even redundant approaches to posted communication can add much to the user experience of today’s complex parking structures.