Category Archives: Wayfinding 101

Successful wayfinding (self-guiding) is hard enough on a single floor plate, but even more difficult when you add one or more floors to the route. Vertical movement is not as ‘built in’ to our evolutionary wayfinding skills as is getting … Continue reading →

Architects like curved building forms and so do we – such shapely spaces are dynamic and interesting to be in. However, curved floor plans make for challenging wayfinding. You just cannot stay oriented in a space without straight lines and … Continue reading →

Two kinds of wayfinding tools help us get oriented and find our way around. Passive wayfinding elements are the environment itself and the built-in cues that provide intuitive information: self-evident entrances, logical pathways and predictable destination locations. Many environments and … Continue reading →

Getting you oriented and helping you stay that way is the first job of wayfinding. You need to know where you are in order to find somewhere else. Many environments have integral orientation features — the church tower in a … Continue reading →

Wayfinding is the act of self-guiding. Wayfinding is gaining an understanding of where you are relative to other things in your environment and then moving successfully and intentionally to another location. A wayfinding system or program is the strategically organized … Continue reading →

“That’s a rather personal question, Sir”. However, if you’re referring to an object in a photo, and not a line from a Monty Python sketch, here’s a useful tip. A foot-long piece of foam core with a printed checkerboard at 1”, 3” and 6” increments will be … Continue reading →