David Gibson (3)

Solid, brief overview of wayfinding. Good for a design student needing a primer on the industry, perhaps; I, however, was hoping for a little bit more the psychology and sociology behind the decisions people make when getting around. What directions or heights do people look at? What about that area of design that subconsciously steers people, like a patterned floor that angles towards the route most people need? That sort of thing.

The book starts with a little historical context for this niche industry and some notes on education and training to work in this field. The middle chunk looks at colors and typography and such considerations, providing numerous photographic examples, though not often with the amount of explanation I would have liked. The last fourth of the book really drifted away from my interests, getting fabrication concepts and materials, notes on supervising construction of signage, etc.

Ironically, for a book on wayfinding that even starts with a comparison to the legibility and meaning of written language, some pages could stand to be reworked for better flow. The worst was a page that discusses Shea Stadium signage: I missed the first 5 lines of text on that page because they were tucked away at the bottom-left column under 2 large photographs! Others were just placed distractingly, and not all images are captioned.… (mer)