10.30am

This sign outside a church in Bath shows good design thinking. 

It's on a busy road but drivers might glance across.

We know it's a church. We know they meet on Sundays. The only thing that's worth saying legibly enough to be read at a glance is '10.30am'. And the sheer size of it gives a strong affordance of 'you're invited'.

You are somewhere here

Birmingham New Street station has undergone a massive transformation recently - it's now the Grand Central shopping centre with trains. It's very shiny indeed and is part of the continuing transformation of Birmingham.

But next time I go, I'm taking a supply of You are here stickers for the maps.

Pointing the way

Two nice examples of hand-held wayfinding.

Helping crowds at Birmingham railway station find the way out during refurbishments.

Aston Villa fans show their team which way to the goal (it hasn't been their best season).

Photo: The Times 2015.

Which way to the metro?

We encountered this sign at Copenhagen airport recently, looking for the metro.

I went for the at-a-glance visual cluster and headed for the left. Jenny saw the horizontal grid, and headed for the right. I eventually followed.

You know where you are on the Great Wall of China

Extreme outsourcing

Spotted by Michael Green in a department store in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

It's behind you

I'm not sure why backwards pointing arrows are so rare - like these ones on a flight information display at Helsinki Airport.

If you don't know where something is, it is only by chance that you might be facing in the right direction when you look for it on a sign.

Usually it is the absence of an obvious destination that tells you it is not in the direction you are facing. So you have to turn around and look for it on another sign, or, in the case of a hanging sign, look on the other side to see if it is listed there.

Bicycle jousting in Helsinki

Well, that's what it looks like to me.

Ups and downs on the Tube

See what I nearly did (the clue is the position of the down arrow)?

One's in the Eye

I mentioned architects and signs a few years ago on this blog, and it grew into a piece that's just appeared in Eye magazine. They've put some supporting pictures I provided on the Eye blog. The article is here, and the blog is here.





There's a nice profile of Robin Kinross in this issue. It's good to see his single-minded pursuit of quality in design writing and publishing properly celebrated.

Early hospital sign

Last week I was at the Multidisciplinary Approaches to Discourse conference held in Moissac, in southwestern France. Moissac Abbey is a rather fine church and former monastery dating from the seventh century - part of which was torn down to make way for the railway in the nineteenth century (well, you can't stop progress).

This picture of a man with a crutch announces the hospital wing of the abbey. An early pictogram, in effect, as many people would not have been able to read.

Signaletics

I'm speaking at the Sign09 conference in Vienna next week, jointly organised by the International Institute for Information Design and the Sign Design Society. They've put together a terrific programme - unfortunately it is over 9 days, so I imagine few visitors will be able to go for the whole thing. I'm speaking about how wayfinding is taught on our MA course at Reading, and showing student work.

On just before me is Timothy Nissen, from Switzerland, who is speaking about 'Advanced Studies in Signaletics'. I'm intrigued by the term, which I haven't met before. Googling it gets you to a company doing intelligent signing, and also to this nice video.

Signaletics @ Yahoo! Video

Credit where it's due

After posting about the renaming of buildings at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital, I remembered they were a client of our wayfinding team at Enterprise IG. Checking up I find it was indeed our trusty wayfinders, Colette Jeffrey and Alison Richings who were responsible. Uncommon sense, in fact.
Colette (under her former surname Miller) with David Lewis researched and wrote the standard work on wayfinding for healthcare sites for the NHS. She led wayfinding projects for around 25 hospitals, and is now to be found teaching at Birmingham City University.

Little people run to the left

I think this sign (seen at the Eden Centre in Cornwall) means the nearest fire exit is to your right, but there is another one to your left. Unless the left hand exit is for the piskies.

Ladies THIS WAY

Usability in action. Not one but two extra signs have been required here to persuade the ladies that this really is the way in. What's gone wrong? At a guess, the height of the signs, the collision of too many signs (the baby, the shower... or is it a jellyfish), but perhaps the icons for men and women are just too similar. The two word sign 'Ladies toilet' forces the type to a smaller size, too.





Another thought - where do dads go to change their babies?

Doing without signs

I mentioned before that architects don't seem to like signs. I was in a brand new office block last week, looking for the loos. There were labels on the doors themselves to distinguish the ladies from the gents, but nothing you could see side on or from more than a couple of metres. But I had no trouble finding them by instinct, or perhaps through deduction (they are often near the lifts as they both need the central service shaft). Of course the clincher was the cleaning trolley.

Oddly worded no smoking sign

My compulsion to whip out my iPhone in toilets continues - this one from a National Express train.

I suppose it is entirely reasonable that if I watch someone smoking in the loo, they can complain to the train guard.

I'll have to stop these toilet posts - Paul Luna's talking about the Oxford Literary Festival in his blog this week, and I'm lowering the tone.

Another toilet sign

I like the thoroughness of this sign. When you warn me about hot water, I want to know where it's likely to come at me from.



Location: Royal Station Hotel, Newcastle

Doing what it says on the tin

We all like things that do what they say on the tin. I also like things that say on the tin what they do. Like these shop signs: no guesswork required (unless you're too young to know what a gramophone is).

Locations: the wool shop is in Liskeard, and the radio shop is in Jedburgh.

Not fade away

My photo flatters the legibility of this slowly fading message outside Barts Hospital in London.