The Spaceagency Guide to Wayfinding is the first comprehensive compendium answering two questions: what is wayfinding, and how is a wayfinding project executed?
Leading wayfinding and user experience design consultancy Spaceagency has launched The Spaceagency Guide to Wayfinding, a visual guidebook detailing the process for designing a wayfinding system. Using visual information graphics, this book speaks to designers in their native language.
Wayfinding is a little-known field of design that crosses a number of disciplines, including urban design and planning, product design, graphic design, information design and behavioural psychology. The role of the wayfinding designer is to uncover the latent structure of a building or urban space and to make it visible and comprehensible to the visitor. Without any higher education programmes dedicated to the field, wayfinding is often poorly understood and poorly executed.
This book fills a gap in educational resources devoted to the field. Written by practitioners,The Spaceagency Guide to Wayfinding offers an innovative methodology for developing a wayfinding project that has been successful in practice. Six international case studies from Spaceagency’s own work investigate and illustrate the practical application of wayfinding theory to real-world solutions using a step-by-step demonstration of the relevant techniques required to develop and realise a wayfinding system. Projects cover a wide range of sectors with distinctive and specific spatial, operational and cultural requirements, from the Singapore Rail Corridor and two World Expos, the Eastland Retail Masterplan in Melbourne, the Qatar Cultural and Sports Hub and Heathrow Terminal 2.
The book is broken down into six chapters that guide the reader through the structure and sequence of design stages in the wayfinding design process. The chapters illustrate the unique Spaceagency vision and approach, providing strong insight into spatial and information strategies and how these lead to the design. It becomes clear from the approach described that the term ‘sign’ is not meant to be a rectangular board with a few words on it.
Rather the identity of a place is expressed by the graphics, media and form of the end product. Legibility and universally accessibility are ensured through the application of international standards supported by research. The book also looks at future technologies that may provide new ways of thinking about wayfinding.
The authors of The Spaceagency Guide to Wayfinding are Sarah Manning and Peter Feldmann, directors of Spaceagency. The guide is a result of their united international, multi-disciplinary experiences in comparative area studies, architecture and urbanism, the Space Syntax approach and environmental graphics, gained as practitioners, teachers, guest critics and lecturers at institutions such as the Architectural Association, University of California, Berkeley, and the Royal College of Art, and in international projects, design competitions and publications with a wide range of global clients and collaborators.
The guide is now available in leading bookstores and on Amazon: www.amazon.co.uk