Information design
Key question
How do people find their way?
Wayfinding systems help people navigate their way around buildings, cities, and transport networks. Combining architecture, graphics, and language, they must function under time pressure and from a distance.
Learning objective: You can explain the basic principles of orientation, analyse decision points, and evaluate pictograms.
You barely notice a good wayfinding system.
7.1 / How people orientate themselves
Paths, edges, districts, nodes, landmarks.
In 1960, in 'The Image of the City', Kevin Lynch described how people mentally organise cities:
01
Paths
Streets, corridors, routes.
02
Borders
Rivers, walls, railway lines.
03
Areas
Neighbourhoods or zones with distinct character.
04
Node
Crossroads and squares where decisions are made.
05
Disability code
Striking landmarks such as towers.
A wayfinding system supports this mental map. It places information at decision points, confirms the route along the way, and announces the destination.
Information belongs at the point of decision.
7.2 / Pictograms
Signs must be understood without words.
Pictograms overcome language barriers, but only if they are familiar or immediately understandable. Many symbols are learnt and standardised, such as in the ISO 7001 standard for public information symbols.
New pictograms should be tested: do people understand what is meant without an explanation? The Isotype visual language of Otto Neurath and Gerd Arntz demonstrates how consistently reduced symbols can form a system.
A pictogram that needs to be explained isn't one.
7.3 / Legibility in Space
At a distance, on the move, against the clock.
Signs are read on the move, from a distance and often under stress. Large, clear typefaces, high contrast, minimal text and consistent positioning are therefore essential. A prime example is the signage system used by SBB (Swiss Federal Railways), the foundations of which were designed by Josef Müller-Brockmann from 1978: one typeface, few colours, fixed positions.
Wayfinding systems must work for everyone: for wheelchair users, people with visual impairments, or those unfamiliar with the area. Tactile elements, Braille, and good lighting are essential; in Switzerland, the SIA 500 standard 'Barrier-free buildings' governs the requirements.
The shorter the glance, the less the text.
Exercise
Analyse a route
Task: Analyse a route in your school or at a railway station.
STEP 1
Follow the path and mark each decision point on a plan.
STEP 2
Photograph the information at each decision point.
STEP 3
Check: Is the goal defined, the direction clear, the path confirmed?
STEP 4
Outline improvements for the two weakest points.
Evaluation: At which points is information missing, and where is there too much?