5 Essential Elements to Include In Your Wayfinding Signage

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Wayfinding Signage
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Negosentro.com | 5 Essential Elements to Include In Your Wayfinding Signage | A subtle yet effective service – that is what your wayfinding signage should be. However, unfortunately, too many wayfinding signage systems fall far short of this description. To ensure that doesn’t happen to you, read on for five essential elements to include in your wayfinding signage. 

1. User-Friendly Language

At the end of the day, no matter how much time and energy you have invested into your wayfinding signage strategy, if you aren’t able to communicate what you want to whom you wish to – then the signs aren’t of much use. Therefore, you want to pay particular attention to the language that you include in your wayfinding signage to ensure that they are user-friendly. 

Utilize this user-friendly terminology, as well as universal iconography, consistently across all your signs to help increase clarity and understanding. Furthermore, enlarge the font size on signs to facilitate self-navigation. When it comes to wayfinding signage, simplicity is always best as verbose explanations will not be read or comprehended. Use as few words as possible as well as pictorial symbols and directional arrows.

2. Sign Standards

When you are developing your wayfinding signage, you must think long-term and work towards creating a system that can grow as your requirements evolve. By creating a system of sign standards, you will be able to decrease expenses, erase repetitions, and ensure smooth workflows for endorsement, creation, and maintenance for any later extensions to your wayfinding signage.  

This is why it is highly recommended that you work with a top wayfinding signage firm who can assist you throughout the process. From designing the signs to ascertaining the most beneficial locations and establishing sign standards, these professionals know what needs to be done to guarantee quality and performance during the life of your wayfinding signage system.

3. Orientation Cues

One of the best ways to ensure that your wayfinding signage is as effective as possible is to utilize the presence of surrounding landmarks and memorable locations. For visitors, these landmarks can work as both orientation cues and memorable cues. As an orientation cue, the landmark can aid a visitor in knowing their present position, which helps them to know which direction they are facing and where they should go next. 

Additionally, a landmark can bring some much-needed recognition to one’s location. As a memorable cue, a marker can make it significantly easier for a return visitor to remember the direction they must go. Therefore, when creating your wayfinding signage, examine where there are visible landmarks and how much perceptibility it has from around the area. 

4. Decision Point Locations

In wayfaring design, a “decision point location” is a spot where a visitor is forced to make a wayfinding decision. It is in these areas that you want to have signs that provide the navigator with the appropriate information to aid them in making the right choice. At these specific points, the signs should both work with the greater goal of your wayfinding design and give the necessary information for all decisions presented there. 

This means that in decision point locations, your signs must inform the visitor of the direction it points, as well as the nearby destinations. This is an essential element for assisting the visitor in reaching their destination. For this to work, you also must have well-structured paths that establish progress and distance and have a definite beginning, middle, and end. 

5. Appropriate Lighting

Too many wayfinding systems neglect to take into account lighting, which plays a significant part. Consider the fact that different materials look good and are easy to read in different settings and under different lighting situations. Therefore, what you use inside a dim hallway isn’t necessarily going to be the same as what you use outside with glaring sunlight. 

For this reason, before officially debuting your wayfinding signage, make sure that you invite early visitors to find their way around. Afterwards, ask them to provide you with their thoughts and ideas for improvement. Have people use these early signs at different times of day, so that you can record their experiences under different settings and scenarios. 

What do you think are the most essential elements of high-quality wayfinding signage? Let us know your thoughts and relevant experiences in the comments below!

AUTHOR BIOZak Zakaria is a Waymaker at dezigntechnic in Dubai who also previously worked as the company’s Graphic Designer and Art Director. Zak is a creative with work experience in multiple multinational agencies such as JWT and Saatchi & Saatchi. Signage design is a family business, making Zak’s personal experience with signage his longest professional commitment

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