Finding our way

Kylie (Your Move) Murphy
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Thirty members of our Your Move community came together on Wednesday morning to think about wayfinding. What works? What doesn’t work? How can you use wayfinding to support active transport in your community, school or workplace?

The morning started with a wayfinding scavenger hunt, done in small teams, to get us engaging critically with the many wayfinding signs between Elizabeth Quay Train Station and the new City of Perth Library.

After a quick debrief we heard from our panel of experts:
• Eden Shepherd, Principal Urban Designer with the MRA focused on the many cues we use to find our way – including landmarks, surfaces, signs and our phones.
• Ben Hames, Design Director at Axiom delved into the top five design elements to consider and five common mistakes.
• Darryl Butler, the Owner and Director of Total Signs, had some great local examples of wayfinding projects using on-ground signage.

It was great to see a number of local governments bring a small across-portfolio team to the event to inform their latest wayfinding projects.

There were lots of great takeouts from the morning’s session but here are my two:
• Eden and Ben emphasised the need to start early, involve relevant stakeholders and develop a framework. Wayfinding should be planned not ad hoc and works best when architects, engineers, designers and active transport planners talk together.
• Ben and Darryl reminded us that what looks fabulous in the board room may look totally out of place and illegible in its final real-world location – think about the user and the context (bigger may be better).

Let us know in the comment section below what your takeout was?

Click on the link to download the Axiom presentation

 

Click on the link to download the Total Signs presentation

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1 Comments

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Julie

Looks like a fantastic workshop. Thanks for the links :)

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