Recently, as part of some exploratory work for my thesis at Academy of Art University, I’ve taken to collecting examples of provocative directional signage. Some examples are concise and highly effective, while others (such as the one above) are less so. I’ve been posting many of my findings, as well as user-submitted examples over on Which Way.

Often the submissions are purely whimsical in nature. However, when one considers how much (or how little) design thinking goes into the creation and implementation of these signs, it was very easy to see the correlation to the work we do here at Molecular as digital marketers. We share a common challenge with your local municipal traffic and signal office: how to best communicate significant information to a user in the shortest span of time.

I found a new respect and appreciation for street signs in particular, as they have the shortest exposure time with their intended audience (about 2.5 to 4.5 seconds, according to a report by Transportation Planning International, titled Increasing Understanding of Traffic Signs, March 2004).

We actually have a pretty cushy time frame in which to communicate our clients’ messages. When you compare the average web interaction to traditional media (a 30-second TV commercial), or the One Way sign on your street… it really put things into perspective. The mass of content of a street sign may be slim — just one or two words, but the message they communicate is often the most pertinent (eg. a Stop sign) :

Bad design in signage systems is easy to spot. In fact, they suffer from much the same design flaws that can afflict web applications: counter-intuitive implementation (as seen in the first example), poor visibility, verbose or obtuse copy, or in the case of this sign below from Finland, failure to communicate across cultures. I think this sign means “watch out for holes” but since I can’t read Finnish, my first thought was that this sign means “Caution: Dead rising from the grave!”:

The next time you see a traffic sign or a directory, consider for a moment the challenges the designer(s) had to meet in order to produce an effective and timely interaction. What can we learn from the implementation, conceptualization, functionality and visibility of the signage systems that we pass by every day?  A group on Flickr known as Finding Our Way:  Photos of Wayfinding and Directional Signage is a great place to start. Please share with us if you happen to come across any signage systems that you feel are particularly well designed!