Wayfinding signs

Outside — at entrances, car parks, internal roads and across the buildings of a campus — signs are made from composite aluminium or painted sheet, on their own structure or on a post, with lettering in UV-resistant vinyl or applied letters, lit where they are read at night. Inside, the materials are acrylic, aluminium, PVC and, where the interior asks for it, wood or glass: panels hung from the ceiling along wide corridors, wall plaques beside doors, floor-standing totems in lobbies and at junctions, floor plans at lifts and stairs. Door plaques are made with swappable inserts — paper or film under an acrylic cover — so a name changes without changing the plaque. For public buildings there are tactile and Braille versions.

A good system is recognised by what it does not need: someone at reception explaining the way. It comes from simple things, kept to everywhere: letters large enough for the distance they are read from, contrast between text and ground, one style of arrow, pictograms understood without words, and the same position on the wall throughout the building. The usual mistake is too many messages on one panel; the second is putting the panel where there is room rather than where the person makes the decision.

That is why a system is planned before it is made: the routes are walked on the plan — from the car park to reception, from reception to every destination — every point where someone has to choose is marked, and at each one it is decided what kind of sign stands there, at what size and with what message. The list of pieces comes out of that plan, not the other way round. Fixing is to wall, ceiling, glass or floor depending on the piece, and a well-planned system leaves room for the changes that come later — a new tenant, a department that moves — without redoing everything.