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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024
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Wayfinding Does More Than Direct You to a Destination

Martin Flores

Signs have directed people to public attractions and businesses for decades, but now the companies who create them and the entities that benefit from them are recognizing the value of a cohesive wayfinding strategy.

“Wayfinding” is a term for guiding people to an intended destination but also showcasing other locations nearby and along the way. Wayfinding can include street and off-ramp signs, interactive kiosks that can identify maps or events, pedestrian signs and location-based services for mobile devices. The effort usually is connected with a city or region’s brand.

Brad Raulston

“It starts economically energizing spaces between (Gaslamp) parking and the convention center,” said Martin Flores, principal of Urban Design and Planning for Rick Engineering Co.. “Secondary destinations are improved quite a bit, because they get more business. People are more comfortable and know they are going the right direction. If you can get people to park, get out of their car, and see what’s out there, it makes a big difference,” he said.

Flores leads wayfinding efforts in eight of the company’s offices from the corporate San Diego office. He points out that if a person is using a phone for driving or walking directions, she or he is not made aware of anything but the destination.

Wayfinding initiative budgets range from $350,000 to $500,000 for a small community, $500,000 to $750,000 for a midsize city, $750,000 to $1.4 million for a large downtown, and $1.4 million to $1.9 million for a regional deployment, according to Flores. That’s to hire a design/planning team and implement the design.

Tyler Blik

Flores said wayfinding is critical for tourism, making people feel comfortable navigating the area and safe enough to stay longer at their destination when they come to visit. He calls cities that encourage movement with messages between destinations “legible cities.”

He said recognition of the value of wayfinding and the push to make cities more walkable and livable has driven growth in the wayfinding business in the past two years.

An upcoming project for Flores is North Park.

Downtown Project

Civic San Diego in March completed its $1.9 million wayfinding and rebranding project for downtown. Flores said the first wayfinding system in 1999 had 271 signs, mostly vehicular signs. Today, he said the system has 194 signs more evenly distributed, 25 map kiosks, five neighborhood district signs and 21 directional compasses in the pavement. The signage directs people to 60 locations, six times the number of location signs at the start of the project.

A 2010 report from Asheville, N.C.’s Convention & Visitors Bureau showed that of 4,076 people surveyed, 87 percent would explore the city more if signage and kiosks provided directions to additional attractions.

A London 2011 study found that a pedestrian wayfinding system resulted in shorter transportation times. For every dollar spent on wayfinding, the city could expect between 90 cents and $2.40 of transportation benefits in return. A 0.5 percent increase in extended-stay or return visitors could increase tax revenues by $50 million a year.

National City Initiative

National City has embarked on about a $1 million wayfinding initiative for its four districts, according to Brad Raulston, the city’s executive director of redevelopment. The project, funded primarily from local grants, is in the concept design phase.

Because of National City’s two trolley stations, the city wants to direct people to transit and points of interest, such as the Frank A. Kimball House Museum, the Santa Fe Depot Museum, Pepper Park and Pier 32 Marina.

“We have done a lot of work in trying to make National City healthier,” Raulston said. “Walking and biking are part of that, but we’re also talking about integrating stores that have healthy produce, giving opportunities for those businesses to have some advertising and making residents aware that these are healthy hubs, areas where you can get healthy products. That can also be our recreation centers and schools and those types of things.”

Raulston said the region’s future is building inward so urban districts, such as National City, can be pedestrian- and transit-friendly. Already, he’s seen the San Diego Association of Governments, the region’s planning agency, and others use wayfinding as a smart growth tool rather than as a purely functional tool, involving health advocates, park designers and sustainability experts.

Trends in wayfinding focus on user experience and technology, said Tyler Blik, principal at BLIK, a local brand communications company. His company created National City’s logo in 2007. He expects there will be 120-160 total signs when the project is complete.

His company has also been contracted to create a historical timeline of National City, which could be a digital display at numerous locations.

“What I’m really encouraging the city to do is not something that is chronologically, linear information, but it truly becomes experiential through each individual that comes upon it, that they can pick and choose the points of history that they want to find information about,” Blik said.

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