Directional signage can make or break a customer experience. After all, if your customer cannot find a store — or find parking, restrooms, and where to pick up their order — their experience with the brand will be adversely affected. Wayfinding signage is an essential, practical tool for directing customers to a location and capturing the attention of passersby.
Creating a wayfinding system and planning wayfinding signage for a business can be a daunting task, especially in facilities with thousands of square feet or a complex layout. The experts at Reveal Graphics streamline this process and can create wayfinding signage plans on your behalf based on floor plans or building sketches.
Purpose of Wayfinding Signage
At its most basic function, directional signage helps people find their way in a building or a facility. It’s a safety feature that impacts the customer experience and can also be an important marketing tool, too.
What Is a Wayfinding System?
A wayfinding system includes any and all forms of directional signage, including indicators painted on walls or on the ground, maps, and other design elements. The wayfinding system comes together to provide a clear path for visitors to navigate through a building or facility. Signage is a critical part of this system.
A wayfinding system may use color coding or a set of numbers or letters to help people find their way, like when parking garages are assigned a color for a specific level or section.
Wayfinding Signage for Safety
Directional signs ensure that people get where they need to go in the safest way possible. This includes signage that directs visitors from parking garages or parking lots to the facility, indicates where fire exits are, or highlights which way to go to find a ramp, elevator, or other accessibility features. Wayfinding signage also improves foot traffic and directs people down a consistent path, reducing congestion in highly populated areas.
In emergency situations, wayfinding signage makes it easier for first responders to navigate to a building or facility. Similarly, for businesses that provide emergency or critical services — like medical offices or veterinary clinics — wayfinding signage ensures that customers who are experiencing an emergency can find the office quickly.
Wayfinding Signage to Improve the Customer Experience
In addition to safety applications, wayfinding signage can improve the customer experience by reducing stress and enabling customers to find your brand easily. In a shopping mall or at a large corporate campus, wayfinding signage simplifies the experience and improves efficiency for the customer, ensuring that they can spend more time in your store or office space and less time in the parking garage.
Proper wayfinding signage also improves efficiency. Vendors, delivery personnel, and other visitors can find offices, delivery drop-offs, and other facilities more easily when proper signage guides them throughout their journey from the parking garage to the office.
Types and Applications of Wayfinding Signage
Wayfinding signage can take the form of wall-mounted signs, banners, directional floor or wall graphics, interior and exterior signage, and even stand-alone signage like a folding sign. The best type of wayfinding signage for a project will vary depending on the location. Signs inside an office building may not be big enough or durable enough for use in a parking garage, which may be more exposed to natural elements.
When Is Wayfinding Signage Needed?
Wayfinding signage should be placed in any location where people need to move from one space to another. The applications are infinite. Some of the most recognizable types of signs include:
- Parking garage signage
- Restrooms signs
- Door plaques in an office building
- Grocery store aisle markers
- Airport terminal signage
- Hospital signage
- Signs in lobbies
- Shopping mall signage
- Directories
- Office or workplace signage
- Informational signs
- Site or landmark markers
Without wayfinding signage, navigating a complex airport system to catch a flight would be an impossible task. Similarly, in a hospital setting, wayfinding signage can improve navigation and ensure that patients are taken care of rapidly at times when seconds and minutes make a difference.
In the workplace, wayfinding signage can keep workers at production plants safe and efficient. For office work, wayfinding signage ensures clients, vendors, and other business stakeholders can navigate the building successfully.
Wayfinding Signage Materials
Reveal Graphics is fully equipped with industry-leading technology and signage materials to create durable, customizable, effective wayfinding signage. Reveal can paint and weld custom signage, employ CNC routers and lasers for precise and detailed signage creation, and apply high-resolution, grand-format latex printing that ensures maximum visibility in larger spaces.
Wayfinding Signage for Accessibility
Wayfinding signage should be visible to site visitors and thoughtfully planned to minimize confusion. Additionally, wayfinding signage must comply with ADA standards so that every user, customer, or site visitor can navigate safely and easily. Signage designed by Reveal Graphics adheres to ADA compliance regulations and includes Brailling. Our signage adheres to best practices that ensure readability, visibility, and accessibility throughout a building site.
Beyond ADA-related accessibility needs, wayfinding signage can make buildings more accessible to visitors who speak different languages. Businesses should prioritize multilingual wayfinding signage to ensure an equal experience for all visitors.
Find the Right Wayfinding Signs for Your Business with Reveal GFX
Reveal Graphics creates signage designed to help people navigate through any type of facility. Custom signs for businesses are designed to make directions visible but also to communicate critical brand messages. Implementing clear wayfinding signage enables businesses to improve the customer experience and keep visitors safe as they navigate to a facility.
Our team of experts can answer your questions about signage and identify the appropriate signage plan for your business or facility. To begin planning a wayfinding signage package, contact our team for a quote.
