Successful wayfinding (self-guiding) is hard enough on a single floor plate, but even more difficult when you add one or more floors to the route. Vertical movement is not as ‘built in’ to our evolutionary wayfinding skills as is getting around on the ground plane. It is necessary to reestablish… Read more »
Architects like curved building forms and so do we – such shapely spaces are dynamic and interesting to be in. However, curved floor plans make for challenging wayfinding. You just cannot stay oriented in a space without straight lines and right-angle corners. The same is true on curving city streets…. Read more »
Two kinds of wayfinding tools help us get oriented and find our way around. Passive wayfinding elements are the environment itself and the built-in cues that provide intuitive information: self-evident entrances, logical pathways and predictable destination locations. Many environments and places have strong passive wayfinding and, therefore, need few directional… Read more »
Getting you oriented and helping you stay that way is the first job of wayfinding. You need to know where you are in order to find somewhere else. Many environments have integral orientation features — the church tower in a small town, the central rotunda in a Beaux-Arts museum, even… Read more »
Wayfinding is the act of self-guiding. Wayfinding is gaining an understanding of where you are relative to other things in your environment and then moving successfully and intentionally to another location. A m is the strategically organized set of tools that facilitate successful wayfinding – signs, maps, icons, color systems… Read more »
The Federal Highway Administration has ordered NYC to replace all of their existing street signs from those with all capital letters to ones with upper-lower case letters. So “BROADWAY” will soon read “Broadway”. Clearview will be the typeface of choice on the new signs. Upper-lower case typography is much more legible… Read more »
This American Life on NPR had a wonderfully balanced story about Americans with Disabilities Act this weekend. The story discusses how federally and state mandated ADA laws help those with disabilities but there is no one to enforce it except those who sue property and business owners. Tom Mundy, someone who’s… Read more »
“That’s a rather personal question, Sir”. However, if you’re referring to an object in a photo, and not a line from a Monty Python sketch, here’s a useful tip. A foot-long piece of foam core with a printed checkerboard at 1”, 3” and 6” increments will be the answer to your scaling woes. Place the foam core… Read more »
It’s easy to get lost in Italy. Not a lot of straight streets, logical urban grids or intuitive addressing. The hilly topography doesn’t help either. Being disoriented a couple times a day is part of the Italian experience. Fortunately, as shown here, there is not much enforcement to prevent private… Read more »
Nearly every city sign code prohibits these freestanding folding signs, but nearly every city looks the other way when it comes to enforcement. Yes, these impromptu marketing signs can be unsightly, and yes, they often partially interrupt smooth pedestrian flow on downtown sidewalks. But show me a street with lots of… Read more »