This means that architects, interior designers, environmental graphic designers, and wayshowing strategists all have a responsibility to create an environment that positively effects an individual during their healing process. Through attractive design, welcoming layout choices, and simplicity in navigation, we can help ease anxieties associated with the hospital environment.

A large number of changes can be made early in the process to ensure that wayfinding behaviour is simplified, thereby reducing stress, and helping to improve the experience of the hospital for all users. The earlier in the design process we are involved, the more malleable the environment, and the easier it is to implement positive changes without having to radically alter a whole floor plan or building. We keep having to say to clients that we love not having to put signage up–no signage means that the building is easy to navigate, means that the patient has less to worry about, and can help them feel at ease in the building.

A major project where this methodology applies is the new Royal Adelaide Hospital. Natural sunlight will filter through the building, some windows can be opened for fresh air, all while ensuring that the building will not overheat. This emphasis on nature extends into the architectural form and signage structure.

All disciplines, across architecture, interior design, landscaping, art, ICT, and Facility Management need to work together, as there is a strong need in a building of this size and complexity to consider how all aspects of the built environment influence user behaviour. The wayshowing forms an important part of and contributes to the integrated design solution. Regular workshops with the user groups will ensure that interdepartmental circulation routes and flows for patients, staff and visitors are developed in a holistic approach, with a consensus from all key stakeholders.

Landmarks, theming and other stimuli will guide the visitor in a intuitive way with a simple information hierarchy applied, delivered in a structured manner where this is needed.

Cross-disciplinary integration, when it occurs early and often, can result in a huge win for all users of these buildings, not least in their health outcomes. The Royal Adelaide Hospital is just one in a series of new projects that make sure all disciplines work together to get a great result, not just in terms of aesthetics or efficacy, but in terms of patient’s physical and mental wellbeing.

We are proud to be involved in this landmark project, and look forward to bringing you more updates as it progresses.

 The Liverpool Hospital project consisted of a large extension to an existing building, and the renovation of a considerable part of the rest of the hospital.

The building design and the campus layout created an interesting navigational challenge in a functioning hospital environment, with large numbers of visitors from a non english speaking background.

It was paramount that the wayfinding system would work for English speaking and non-English speaking clients. To achieve this we implemented what we call the “Airport Gate System”, where destinations are given a numeral code. Numeric coding makes it possible to ‘name’ destinations sequentially; destination 112, is likely to be near 111 and 113.

 The other challenge was that the architect Rice Daubney, requested there be no ceiling suspended signage and as little projecting signage as possible in the corridors of the new build area. To meet this request we opted for wrapped around and wall mounted directional signage.

 We are currently working with the people from Sydney South West Area Health Service to get the rest of the hospital campus primary internal/external wayfinding up-to-date.

This fear is probably based on the myth of the designer as a head-in-the-clouds ‘creative’ type whose sole job is to channel their personal creativity into work for a client. And one of the worst things the design industry has done (aside from cigarette packaging) is let this myth gain traction. This creative is guaranteed to mess up the system because their designs are too weird, or because they don’t take the needs of the wayshowing strategy into account. The creative is then a source of consternation, a threat, and not to be trusted with serious work.

Good thing that a designer is not a creative. Extra good that a designer is not an artist. As summed up by Mike Monteiro in his excellent Design Is A Job:

“The myth of the magical creative is alive and well, and it’s powerful. It’s equally perpetuated by designers and those who work with them. And it’s destructive, reducing a designer’s job to pixel-pusher, prettifier, and someone who feels their way to success. A magical creative is expected to succeed based on instinct, rolling the dice every time, rather than on a methodical process that can be repeated time and time again.”

A designer is a problem solver, working within a set of constraints. To ignore these constraints is to decide not to design. Yes, often solutions will require the designer to think creatively, but this should not be allowed to override the constraints that have already been set in place.

Standards bearers

What do we gain by conforming to standards in signage design?

• First; we have base level of efficacy that can be used to assess designs with–this particularly relates to legibility and vision requirements.
• Second; a level of conformity to information that helps users recognise when a given type of information is being displayed, such as accessible amenities or route selection.
• Third; assurance for the client that the system will work.

This last point is often underrated, but simply saying that a design conforms to the relevant standard often assures the client that the system being presented will minimise problems for their users, whether that is actually the case or not.

The risk with standards is that they stifle creative solutions to existing problems. By saying that a sign needs to be an exact height, typeface and colour, you are removing the ability of the designer to question the need for a sign in the first place. Standards don’t look at end results–they look at the methodology.

Often this situation is encountered with the desire to place Braille and tactile signs throughout large institutions. There are good intentions behind this–people want those with a disability to be able to use their facility independently, and they think the Braille is a neat solution for this. What it ignores is that complex environments cannot be easily navigated using Braille signage.

Imagine going to a conference centre with a large auditorium, closing your eyes, and being expected to find a small panel somewhere on the wall that tells you you’ve reached Door 7. Should be relatively easy to do by systematically scouring the wall. Now imagine that there’s a large number of people attending the conference, and you have to feel your way across a crowded and bustling auditorium. Suddenly the degree of difficulty becomes much higher, if not impossible. 

The requirement for Braille directional signage is often unhelpful, and relying on such a standard ignores the actual needs of the users. Research in the United States indicates that approximately 10% of the legally blind can read Braille, and this continues to drop with the rise in popularity of text-to-speech programs. If the guiding standard was “Visually impaired people can find their through the environment” rather than “Provision must be made for Braille and tactile signage”, then this would not be an issue. Here, then, is a situation where looking outside of the standard can reveal better solutions which would otherwise not have been apparent. By the way, the image below? That’s a touch screen interface with Braille explanatory text. You would not believe how useful that is.

Reliance on standards for some aspects of wayshowing design then starts to influence the desire for standards across all aspects—because its much easier to design these systems when you don’t have to think. Proper, considered thought is energy draining, which is why people will often rely on systems and processes to cover for their mental laziness. Everyone does it, because it saves time, and is way easier.

Consider buying a shoe. Do you get your foot measured every time? Probably not–you know which shoe size fits, and you’ll ask to try that one on. If the shoe does not fit properly, then you’ll adjust your expectations of shoe size up or down a little to match, and ask the shop assistant to provide you with a shoe that does fit. In all likelihood, the shoe is still not going to be a perfect fit. The only way to ensure that is to get it custom made.

I’m sure you’re smart enough to draw the analogy here. Wayshowing strategy and design is bespoke work. People come to you because they have problems they cannot solve themselves, and probably don’t fit in the traditional systems that manufacturers provide. They often need solutions to complex problems, or require integrated architectural and signage solutions.

The (attractive) elephant in the room

Design creates value not through making things look good but by solving tricky problems through analytical and creative thinking. And, yes, there is an aesthetic basis for some of these solutions. There is a school of thought regarding User Interface design which posits that when people ask for, or describe, interfaces which are intuitive, they are actually talking about having a positive aesthetic reaction to it.

It follows, and makes logical sense, that an attractive user interface is likely to be more intuitive (read: accepted) than one which is ugly. When all other factors are considered equal, people will always opt for the more aesthetically pleasing option. Although subjective, a large number of naturally beautiful qualities make sense for interface design; symmetry, scale, relationship, and iconography are all important.

A wayshowing system is essentially a user interface for the built environment—a series of tools that someone can use to find their way around a building. The clarity and aesthetic quality of this interface will influence the way people interact with the environment. You could have the clearest and most logical wayfinding solution, but if that solution is ugly it is unlikely to be valued and accepted by the client and the user.

Part of this aesthetic solution has to resolve the way in which a wayshowing system integrates with the environment around it. There needs to be a balance between the clarity of information delivery and the ties to the building, park or street. If that balance is not achieved, the system will fail to be effective–you either have a system that sticks out like a sore thumb, and looks about as good, or a design that fades into the background, and is about as useful as a sore thumb. The design below manages to do both; practically invisible, with its grey-on-grey approach, but once you see it, it rewards you with unabashed blandness.

Standards and regulations alone cannot tell you how attractive a design is, and yet they seek to control every aspect of the way a piece of information is structured on the panel. Text size, character width, image size, colour contrast–all of these have been, in one aspect or another, regulated to conform to standards based design. Most of this could be solved by asking the simple question:

Does it work?

Aesthetic value as a civic duty

Those who’ve been paying attention throughout this rant will probably be able to surmise where this is going, but it bears explanation. Wayshowing designers must accept some form of responsibility for the aesthetic beauty present in the built environment. Amongst street artists, architects, and bill posters, we are the least examined discipline, and yet our designs have a strong impact on how an area is perceived.

Designers like to think of themselves as agents of change, an important guiding force in the world–you should read First Things First 2000 to get an understanding of this mindset. For all its posturing and socially responsible thinking, the manifesto says very little of the joy that beautiful design can bring to our lives.

Clients often say they know little of design, and this may be so. I know of designers (myself included) who have had forceful physical reactions to works of art and design. I have yet to meet a client who has similar feelings about visual ephemera. And yet they all have Apple products, where beauty is pushed to the point that ergonomics are often disregarded, and they all want to live in traditionally beautiful homes.

These are people who are willing to sacrifice a beautiful design for a cheaper, slightly less beautiful one, and yet they must have some base perception of what is and isn’t attractive, or they would not choose to decorate their homes, have good china, enjoy one painting over another. It is not that they dismiss the value of art and design–it is that they value it less than other things. These are not the same thing.

To say that there are very few aesthetes (those who value beauty above all else) is to ignore that most people have a feeling for beauty, it’s just not first on their list of priorities. But they still have it. We do not use smell as our primary sense, and yet we prefer a nice perfume to a dead fish. If we extrapolate this to visual design, should we not aim for beauty alongside usability?

The difficulty of aiming so high is that its much easier to assess how well something works than how good it looks. Jonathon Rez talks about how one might assess wayfinding systems:

“Some of the most functional wayfinding systems I know, those that effectively help people navigate through an environment, aren’t particularly aesthetically appealing; some highly imaginative and beautifully crafted designs provide a pleasing experience, which in turn is undermined by the frustration rendered by their impracticality. Another typical evaluation criteria would be the level to which the design is sensitive to the physical context in terms of placement, choice of materials, colours, form, typography etc… and the extent to which this supports or inhibits the desired visitor experience”.

This sentence summarises what I’m attempting to express here–the design of a wayfinding system is more than just how it works, or how it looks. It is the fusion of both that creates the best experience for users. Yes, standards and standardised designs will help ensure that the directional information works, but a truly effective wayfinding system will combine clear directions and beautiful design.

Beautiful design, like art, should be timeless–and yet that initial frisson, gasp and wonder will fade with time. Yes, Van Gogh’s Starry Night is still pleasing to look at, but its sublime nature has faded with time. Comedy, too, falls victim to the same trap, whereby jokes that were once funny fade with repeated telling.

Design is not immune to this problem. Attempting to control the use of colours, typefaces and panel sizes any further risks the harmony of design and clarity by removing the ability of the designer to create a great experience, and letting that which was visually appealing ten or fifteen years ago dominate that which is created now. Standards have immense power over the way designs function, and trust in the absolute letter of these can be misplaced. Designers should question how it is that these standards are agreed upon, and who it is that benefits from their solutions.

To summarise, I am arguing that design is not just the façade applied to an engineering solution. Design is problem solving. The fact that most designers also make beautiful things should tell you that how it looks is an integral part of how it works.

We see less and less neon in shops and streets these days. Neon signs have become more an installation or art feature rather than common thing in public places. Is it that they are considered outdated and reminiscent of an age which is no longer relevant, or are there other reasons for their disappearance? Other, sinister reasons?

Imagine Route 66, Vegas or even countryside petrol stations during the forties. Those colourful neon tubes that formed letters or images; such a great memory! 

Where have all the neon signs gone? The real question is; who took over? LED did, for many reasons; price, longevity, flexibility, and maintenance are all improved with LED. Neon lights have obviously lost the battle against LED, one of the prominent results of advances in technology. As price has come down, the quantity of these signs has soared.

Good urban planning gets schools into the neighbourhoods where they are needed most, places hospitals in centralised locations, allows for growth and plans highways accordingly. Urban planners must also consider how future growth will affect traffic flow and try to eliminate trouble spots before they become a problem, otherwise the issues that we encounter in Greater Melbourne become more and more apparent.

When reading an article in the Architecturesource, I came across a study from the Grattan Institute, called  Social Cities. The report suggests that green spaces encourage re-connection, communication and community oriented living. Health issues associated with loneliness for instance drop in areas that focus on these characteristics.

And bigger does not necessarily mean better: Simple changes, like installing benches at the edge of a public area or creating a so-called ‘pocket park’, can sometimes be all that’s needed for people wanting to spend time in such an area. Plazas, squares, or a shady park are all places where people gather to rest, people watch, talk, exercise, listen to a concert etc. And the common denominator is that they are welcoming. Melbourne has lucked out; we have  Federation Square, benches along the Yarra River, the Botanical Gardens, Southbank with it’s buskers, the benches on Bourke street in the Mall area, not to mention countless city and inner-urban parks.

People gather in these places because they are attractive, easy to access and encourage social interaction. And how easy is it to then start talking to the person next to you? I often do!

We are currently working on a new development from Stockland, where there is a strong focus to improve health and wellbeing by utilising the environment people live in. ID/Lab was approached to develop a strategy to encourage people to walk and cycle more, and to create more of a community. In close collaboration with SJB Urban, we developed a plan that includes creating pedestrian-priority home-zones, extra safe bicycle paths, a delivery service from the local supermarket, community activities in  the parks, a website and informative, encouraging signage. The ideas developed for this project will ultimately become a blueprint for future residential communities.

The Social Cities reinforces the value of the work we performed there, and will hopefully influence the future development of our city.

On a delightful tour through the city, we were shown a wide range of heritage letterforms, typography, murals, stencils and lightboxes. After the turn of the century, when stencil art first became prominent in the UK, Melbourne embraced street art, which caused a vast increase in public awareness of how our laneways are decorated. The resulting explosion of street art has been encouraging and is evident for all to see.

Walking through the city and its laneways, it quickly became apparent how much of the city’s history is reflected in the signs people choose to adorn their buildings.

In the early days, Melbourne’s lanes were used for deliveries, as workshops and extensions of warehouses and factories, for night-soil collection and as tips for rubbish. They were poorly lit, and frequently used as makeshift public toilets, with urine being the ubiquitous 19th-century city smell, particularly in the theatre and entertainment precincts. During the 20th century, Melbourne’s lanes and alleys were recognised for their heritage character and as providing an important inner network of public space. These days the laneways add that special European feel to the city, and the smell of urine has luckily evaporated. Some lanes have been renamed, like Corporation Lane off Flinders Lane. It was renamed AC/DC Lane to commemorate the rock band whose 1975 It’s a Long Way to the Top film clip featured the band performing on the back of a truck travelling down Swanston Street. These days many of the laneways are used for the expression of art.

Heffernan Lane for instance is the site of artist Evangelos Sakaris. Sakaris’s work involved the instalment along the lane of contemporary street signs bearing excerpts of ancient Greek and Chinese texts, to highlight the connections between these cultures.

The rise and fall of Melbourne during the gold-rush, the various waves of migration, the emergence of street art, and the development of the iconic lane ways were all apparent in one of the most common and underrated forms of Melbourne’s cultural expression. During our walk we learned a good deal about the history of our great city. For anyone with a passing interest in the history of Melbourne, studying the way the cities lanes, street art and signage interact is well worth your time.

I can’t remember how long ago it has been that I had to spend some time in hospital, but what I do remember are vague childhood memories of the surroundings: long corridors, white lights, lots of signs with unfamiliar names, the smell of antiseptics and an unfriendly alien looking doctor.

Today’s hospitals and their doctor’s have certainly changed for the better! If one does an image search for ‘hospital design’, you’ll find many of modern hospitals with plenty of pretty pictures. They are starting to look more and more like hotels. However, as a doctor suggests in a New York Times article (‘Hospitals Aren’t Hotels’):

“Hospitals are not hotels, and although hospital patients may in some ways be informed consumers, they’re predominantly sick, needy people, depending on us, the nurses and doctors, to get them through a very tough physical time. They do not come to us for vacation, but because they need the specialised, often painful help that only we can provide. Sadly, sometimes we cannot give them the kind of help they need.
A survey focused on “satisfaction” elides the true nature of the work that hospitals do. In order to heal, we must first hurt.”

We, as designers, of course, provide our contribution in different ways. Architects and designers have been putting more effort in making the hospital a place to be less scary and more appealing. As mentioned in the Medaesthetics blog, the hope of one of the design studios in the US was that its super-graphics can serve as a pleasant distraction for visitors/patients of the hospital. For example, that it may lead people to discussions that can re-focus their conversation towards something positive and uplifting.

At ID/Lab I’m currently working on the New Royal Adelaide Hospital, designing wall graphics and the signage hardware. A blog source like Medaesthetics is a great inspiration and knowledge source as it has quite an extensive collection of highly-designed health care facilities across the world.

Again, its good to remember what the place is really for: that the people who stay there need to be taken care of. Good wayfinding and clear signage make already stressed people less uncomfortable. Yet, the look and feel of the hospital itself should not overwhelm the actual work that staff perform. It’s really about the struggle of finding the balance between form and function.

If I can help with making a person a bit more comfortable during a difficult time in their life, then that’s the least I can do for them.

Because, honestly, we don’t actually want to spend time in health care facilities in the first place, do we?

What sort of advice do you give your clients on creating an effective sign?
“Colour, design, clarity and information. A sign is nothing without the right information.”
He is also a firm believer in the old saying less is more–“Less wording, more impact”.

Rob has been through three major changes in the sign industry.
“The first 13 years I produced all signs with paint and brush. In 1989 I bought my first computerised vinyl cutter. In the last 5 years I have also been producing signs using digital printing.”

How has sign-writing changed for you?

“Less labour intense. Less working with your hands and too much time spent on the computer for my liking. It has gone from totally manual–all done by hand and brush–to computer and print based.”

Rob also explains how the art form has gone out of sign-writing. “The reason I became a sign-writer was because art and graphics were my best subjects at school. These days it requires less of an artistic talent.”

When you walk past an old hand-painted sign, you can’t help but wonder what clues to the past they hold, the things they’ve seen and the story behind them. In 1984 Rob travelled around Australia for 2 years hand-painting signs. He has kept photo albums of these signs and explains how they tell a story. From the people witnessed in the towns to still being able to recall all the free meals he and his friend would receive when sign-writing food stores.

A particularly memorable meal? 

“We were working on a seafood shop one night when a customer ordered five lobsters just before closing. The store would have usually been shut but stayed open for us to sign-write it. The owner said he wouldn’t have made the sale if it wasn’t for us, and he gave us a free lobster.” 

“There was also a night when the local sign-writers must have been unhappy with sign-writers from out of town taking their business, so they threw paint over a sign we were working on. We had to start again and re-paint it.”

Do you miss hand-painting?

“Of course.” He admits it required a lot of patience and is not so sure if he could go back now and sit in front of a sign hand-painting for 5-6 hours straight. “I used to spend 2-3 days painting a sign. Even when vinyl was introduced, I still had to manually cut out the lettering”. At trade school they were taught the art of typography, and how to construct each letter. We had to paint alphabet after alphabet for practice. The teacher always said, how do you know the difference between a good and bad sign-writer? Easy, look at his S’s. S’s were always the hardest to write”.

These days when I need to do a readability font study for signage hardware, I just pick from hundreds of fonts readily available in my computer’s font kit. Print all the different options out and compare them. How times have changed!

Advertisement for Braniff International: The copy is worth a good read.

Detail from TWA advertisement

This branding is becoming increasingly evident in the interior design of the cabin. What used to be a fairly utilitarian space has become more aggressive in reminding you which airline you are flying with, as if by shoving their brand in our face for at least an hour we will associate them with flying, and become more likely to use them in the future.

Thai Airways economy cabin interior

For Thai Airways, we see the colour palette for the seats is entirely drawn from Thai Airways branding. On top of that, the vinyl graphics are applied to the entire length of the cabin walls.

Air Asia cabin interior

Try and guess what colour Air Asia’s logo is.

Created Experiences in air travel are nothing new. Realistically, an airline has only a couple of things to actually compete on: price, availability, reliability. Once those are at a rough parity, the airline must use branding to differentiate themselves. (A good piece on how substitutes work in markets can be found here.)

These managed interactions mean that each time you fly, you will undoubtedly have a very similar experience. If you like that experience, you’re more likely to choose it again. But if we know that an experience is created, does that make it less authentic? Not necessarily. Virgin Australia recently introduced this gem to their end of flight patter:

“We realise that you have a choice of airlines, and want to thank you for choosing to fly with Virgin.”

How does this apply to creating experiences in the built environment? A consistent experience for users means that the environment is easier to navigate and understand. The less time spent thinking about what is meant to be done with the surroundings, the more time can be spend on thinking about what can be done in them. This is where an integrated approach to branding the environment and providing wayfinding assistance can be crucial.

Messages should be delivered in the same way across the whole site: that means verbal and written directions should sound the same. The wayshowing system should be an expression of the organisations branding, and consider how they want the user to feel while they interact with it. Finally, this integration, as with any sort of branding, should honestly reflect the organisations values and identity. Otherwise it will be seen as little more than attractive fakery.

You can’t compare a small, flat country like the Netherlands with a huge country like Australia, however many Australian cities have flat areas that are perfect for cycling. There are also plenty of Australians who live within cycling distance from work. People could ride instead of driving to work, and this would lessen some of the ever-increasing peak-hour traffic jams in our major cities. In my opinion, one solution to this would be creating a safe thoroughfare for bicycles on their way to and from work.

Although Melbourne is known for its cycle paths, there are many poor or broken connections and paths, and some even come to a complete stop at busy intersections, where protection from traffic is most needed. Once you have crossed the intersection without being run off the road, the bicycle path picks up again. Quite frankly, I still don’t understand the ‘safety’ principles behind this decision…

Hopefully the video inspires people to do something about the situation here in Melbourne!