Environmental & Wayfinding Design

When someone walks into an unfamiliar hospital, transit station, or office tower, the difference between confidence and a stressful, late, frustrated arrival is environmental graphic design: the signs, maps, and spatial cues that answer Where am I, Where can I go, and How do I get there. This beginner course teaches the discipline the way practitioners at firms like Pentagram, Bruce Mau Design, and Applied Wayfinding actually work - starting from Paul Arthur and Romedi Passini's wayfinding model and Kevin Lynch's five elements of legibility, moving through a real site analysis, a sign-type taxonomy (identification, directional, informational, regulatory), and a message schedule that assigns every sign a location, message, and code. You will design to hard requirements - ADA 703 tactile-character and Braille rules, the 60-inch baseline for raised characters, ISO 7001 public symbols, and contrast and mounting-height numbers - and finish with an annotated signage location plan, a typed message schedule, and a sign-type drawing package a fabricator and a facilities team can build and install from.