A Marketer’s Mind­shift: Find­ing Your Way Through Wayfind­ing Signs

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rhon­da O’Connor, CEO of Get­ting Grit­ty. Rhon­da O’Connor is tena­cious about get­ting results. She loves to for­mu­late strate­gies and exe­cute on them, so she start­ed her own com­pa­ny, Grit Mar­keter, to help oth­ers get the job done right and achieve reli­able results. 

Links: LinkedIn Pro­file

Back in my 20s, I had a big shift in how I observe and think about signs. Then in my 30s, anoth­er shift in my mind­set affect­ed my job as a mar­keter. I have a long his­to­ry of being a team play­er who’ll do any­thing to get the job done.

How­ev­er, some­times a good mar­keter must set her ego aside and real­ize that just because she can design a sign, doesn’t mean she should. Luck­i­ly my ego was small enough to shift out of the way and let experts step in and make me look good.

This is my sto­ry about find­ing my way through wayfind­ing signs.

Wayfind­ing signs make sure you can find a bedrid­den friend at the hos­pi­tal, tour a col­lege cam­pus with your high school senior, inter­view at a cor­po­rate head­quar­ters for a job oppor­tu­ni­ty or race through an air­port to get to your gate on time.

I remem­ber clear­ly when one of my col­leagues explained what ​“wayfind­ing signs” were. She and I were dis­cussing com­mon chal­lenges for an upcom­ing ren­o­va­tion project for a com­mu­ni­ty hos­pi­tal, and she men­tioned that ​“wayfind­ing signs” were a com­mon challenge.

I asked, ​“What are wayfind­ing signs?” I had nev­er heard the term ​“wayfind­ing”, and Google didn’t exist back then.

So my col­league explained how these type of signs exist in our every­day lives, and how the major­i­ty of us take them for grant­ed. When they’re done well, you don’t notice them. When they’re done poor­ly, you don’t even real­ize they’re the problem.

What Are Wayfind­ing Signs?

Wayfind­ing signs are a series of signs that pro­vide direc­tions to nav­i­gate a city or large com­plex. Think about when you enter an air­port. You look for your air­line (unless you check-in ahead of time), then you look for your ter­mi­nal and then your gate. Then you wait. And if you’re like me, you back­track to the near­est Starbucks.

You suc­cess­ful­ly find your gate because a sign plan­ner had the exper­tise and expe­ri­ence to know where and when to place signs, which helped you nav­i­gate the minute you got out of your Lyft or Uber to your final destination.

I spent the first 30 years of my life tak­ing these signs for grant­ed. After my new­found appre­ci­a­tion, I start­ed tak­ing note of how well they’re done – and when they’re not.

Wayfind­ing Signs Cre­ate a Friend­ly User Inter­face (UI) for In-Per­son Customers

If you are like the major­i­ty of peo­ple, you don’t like to ask for direc­tions. These signs allow you to avoid ask­ing for help and inter­act­ing with strangers. They make you feel con­fi­dent and smart because you were able to nav­i­gate to your des­ti­na­tion all on your own.

The same holds true for a web­site or soft­ware solu­tion that pro­vides a 5‑star user expe­ri­ence and user inter­face (UX/UI). When you can eas­i­ly nav­i­gate a web­site or intu­itive­ly pick up a new soft­ware, you just feel smarter and fall in love with the prod­uct. The oppo­site is true when you can’t. You are irri­ta­ble and impa­tient. You do not love the prod­uct or experience.

If you are like me, I wor­ry about keep­ing up with tech­nol­o­gy trends. When I come across one that isn’t easy to use, I feel stu­pid. When wayfind­ing signs are done poor­ly, that’s how I feel. Or how I used to feel. Now, I know to blame poor signage.

Every­one under­stands the val­ue of mak­ing an amaz­ing first impres­sion with a web­site. How­ev­er, mod­ern mar­keters are forced to keep up with evolv­ing tech­nol­o­gy and trends to cre­ate that pos­i­tive vir­tu­al expe­ri­ence. Nav­i­gat­ing a col­lege cam­pus using wayfind­ing signs pro­vides the same set of chal­lenges that nav­i­gat­ing a web­site entails.

Hir­ing knowl­edge­able experts to design and build an intu­itive nav­i­ga­tion expe­ri­ence is crit­i­cal to bring­ing web­site vis­i­tors back and con­vert­ing them to cus­tomers. The same is true for wayfind­ing signs. Imag­ine a high school senior vis­it­ing a col­lege cam­pus with her par­ents. Feel­ing lost and con­fused is not a good first impression.

Putting Up a Stop Sign for Sign Requests

As a mar­keter, it’s valu­able for us to draw a dis­tinc­tion between signs and wayfind­ing signs because we are typ­i­cal­ly the peo­ple who get asked to design or order signs. We are the brand stan­dard police, mak­ing sure our col­leagues don’t dis­tort the logo, use the wrong font or apply the wrong RGB swatch.

The request to design a sign is often trig­gered by a bad cus­tomer expe­ri­ence in hopes that slap­ping up anoth­er sign will resolve the issue. In real­i­ty, it just exac­er­bates the problem.

At one of my pre­vi­ous posi­tions, this hap­pened over and over. I was not in charge of mak­ing or order­ing the signs at the time. How­ev­er, I sug­gest­ed we bring in sign experts, and then shared my sto­ry of how I first learned about wayfind­ing signs.

My sug­ges­tion was so well-received that I was placed in charge of select­ing and hir­ing a com­pa­ny to com­pre­hen­sive­ly review, plan, design, and imple­ment wayfind­ing signs. No good idea goes unre­ward­ed, right?

Top Six Takeaways

While I cre­at­ed work for myself, I gained an even greater appre­ci­a­tion of sign plan­ning and design. Here are the Top Six Take­aways I learned in man­ag­ing this process.

1. Sign Type Selec­tion: There are count­less sign types for your bud­get, and you’ll need a vari­ety of them based on your loca­tion. For exam­ple, does it need viewed at night? How can you best light it? Hav­ing a ven­dor who is up-to-speed on the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy can help you select the right sign type for your budget.
2. Loca­tion, Loca­tion, Loca­tion: You have to deliv­er infor­ma­tion at just the right time. When you are dri­ving, it is essen­tial to know that 30 feet ahead you’ll need to turn left. A sign engi­neer knew to place a direc­tion­al sign that cues you to get ready for that turn. Then, when you are at the turn, there is anoth­er vari­a­tion of that sign telling you to turn. Who knew we were so needy?
3. Typog­ra­phy: Mar­keters know typog­ra­phy is very impor­tant to con­vey the brand. How­ev­er, for wayfind­ing signs, it’s about read­abil­i­ty as you are dri­ving or walk­ing up to a sign. How large does the copy need to be to be leg­i­ble from 30 feet? San Serif fonts are bet­ter than serif, and while you might think ALL CAPS is big­ger, bold­er and bet­ter, it’s eas­i­er to read when some­one can dis­tin­guish let­ters using Ini­tial Caps.
4. Mul­ti-Lan­guage: For my project, we need­ed to replace Eng­lish and Span­ish signs. How­ev­er, after con­duct­ing inter­views with staff mem­bers who dealt with cus­tomers face-to-face, we real­ized there were sev­er­al oth­er lan­guages, as well as illit­er­a­cy chal­lenges. So instead of cre­at­ing mul­ti-lan­guage signs, we lever­aged icons and colors.
5. Icons and Pic­tographs: Icons and pic­tographs were devel­oped to help cus­tomers nav­i­gate the site. Hav­ing exter­nal experts bring a fresh per­spec­tive for icons and images is essen­tial for suc­cess. Often, com­pa­nies have their own lin­go, acronyms and icons that may not make sense to out­siders. Hav­ing an out­side per­spec­tive and an author­i­ty on the sub­ject is crit­i­cal for devel­op­ing or select­ing the right images to con­vey the best meaning.
6. Col­or Con­veys Mean­ing: We all know red means stop and green means go. Some may even know that yel­low is com­mon­ly used for warn­ings. But when it comes to signs, there are uni­ver­sal col­ors to help. For exam­ple, a park­ing sign is often blue. Your signs can lever­age uni­ver­sal col­or schemes that your vis­i­tors don’t even real­ize they intu­itive­ly know.

For me, hav­ing relied on the exper­tise of Lat­i­tude Sig­nage + Design pro­vid­ed invalu­able lessons and led to improved traf­fic flow. After we com­plet­ed the main loca­tion and it was viewed suc­cess­ful­ly by staff and cus­tomers, our lead­er­ship bud­get­ed to have five oth­er sites redone. We also won a com­mu­ni­ca­tion award for the project.

How to Sell Out­sourc­ing Wayfind­ing Signs

I worked for some great lead­ers who under­stood the val­ue of hir­ing experts. How­ev­er, I do under­stand how hard it can be to sug­gest out­sourc­ing a project when it feels you have in-house design­ers with capacity.

If you have an upcom­ing project or field requests to, ​“Make a sign”, here are some sug­ges­tions for sell­ing the val­ue of out­sourc­ing the work.

1. Use the ​“5 Whys” process to deter­mine the root cause for why a sign is need­ed. What trig­gered the need for this sign? Does the sign real­ly solve the prob­lem or just make some­one feel like some­thing was done?
2. Ask them about a time they suc­cess­ful­ly or unsuc­cess­ful­ly nav­i­gat­ed an air­port, hos­pi­tal or col­lege campus.
3. Com­mu­ni­cate that there is a ​“sci­ence” to it, and as much as you are an expert in cer­tain aspects, you are smart enough to know when to bring in a sign expert.
4. Think ahead and bud­get for signs. If you can build a case (and bud­get) for how it will improve cus­tomer ser­vice, you can proac­tive­ly solve the prob­lem vs. scram­bling to find mon­ey for an unbud­get­ed line-item.

Become the In-House Expert

If you have amaz­ing in-house design­ers, you may want to refrain from out­sourc­ing this type of project. How­ev­er, it’s impor­tant to check your ego at the door. While I didn’t do the design work, I man­aged the project, learned the sci­ence of signs and improved traf­fic at five loca­tions, thus improv­ing cus­tomer ser­vice and many first impres­sions. I became the in-house expert who knows some things need to be han­dled by an out­side expert.