(De)signing the Way
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Get your hands on a copy of the “The Journey Issue,” so that you can start collecting our tear-out infographic posters. In this issue’s poster, “(De)signing the Way,” discover the tricks wayfinding designers employ to help travelers navigate airports – from traditional signage (Departures –>) to subconscious cues, like angled counters and yellow brick roads, that subtly guide passenger traffic.
A good airport wayfinding system will keep passengers from getting lost, but a great wayfinding system can do much more. At Edmonton International Airport, the graphic floor tiles aren’t just there to too look pretty: They also function as a cue for visually-impaired travelers who may have poor depth-perception, helping them to effectively judge the distance to their gates. Wayfinding designers at Vancouver International Airport utilized three different types of flooring to send wayfinding cues to the visually-impaired: Carpet signals that a gate is close by, laminate flooring indicates that you’re in a retail area and patterns in tile or terrazzo flooring help to identify exits.
- Carpet flooring at Vancouver International Airport signals that a gate is near.
Photo: Larry Goldstein.
Wayfinding can also help to create a unique airport identity. At Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, traditional (read: forgettable!) parking signs are replaced with emblems of Dutch culture – a tulip, speed skater, or farmer, for example – highlighting Dutch culture while simultaneously helping you to remember where you parked your car (definitely not P2!).
The design concept behind Doha International Airport’s recent wayfinding makeover by Studio FM Milano was based on the repetition of a simplified plan of the airport, allowing for a coherent design language to emerge: “By turning the simplified plan around a center with different angles and points of rotation, they generated a multitude of grids for the distinctive pictogram set and for all the patterns that identify all the different spaces of the airport.”
- Images courtesy of Studio FM Milano
Has your curiosity been piqued? Read more in “(De)signing the Way.”