designworkplan


Airport Signage: Photo inspiration

by Sander Baumann. Average Reading Time: about 3 minutes.

Airport signs & wayfind­ing sys­tems are guides to show vis­i­tors the way. From find­ing the toi­lets, gates, tran­f­sers or even the cof­fee cor­ner, signs are needed to show the way. Air­port sig­nage design is not a easy task and cre­at­ing a wayfind­ing sys­tem in a air­port which will have to guide thou­sands of vis­i­tors takes a in-dept case study of the visual envi­ron­ment, trav­ellers stream, detailed prints of the build­ing and much more. In this photo show­case I’ve col­lected images of Air­port Sig­nage from cities all over the world, using the photo web­site flickr.

Düs­sel­dorf Air­port Signs

Airport signage and wayfinding inspirationPhoto credit iwouldstay

Air­port Sig­nage Design

When design­ing sig­nage for a Air­port or a other pub­lic build­ing you have to take a good notice of the visual sur­round­ings the sig­nage will be placed in. The back­gound col­ors of walls and win­dows, the amount day­light let in the build­ing, the light­ing and more envi­ron­men­tal ele­ments are impor­tant when design­ing sig­nage for a aiport. In a visual crowed envi­ron­ment it is impor­tant that sig­nage design stands out to its back­ground, for a max­i­mum effect. Use a color sys­tem with not to many vari­a­tions and be con­sis­tant with the color usage. Think about using illum­nated signs to enhanche the read­abil­ity of the sig­nage and always use mock­ups of the signs to test if the sig­nage is work­ing in the visual surroundings.

Color, typog­ra­phy design and use of pictograms

Design high con­trast signs to ensure good read­abil­ity and leg­i­bilty of the sig­nage. Col­ors that work well are a dark back­ground with a light col­ored text and pic­tograms. For exam­ple a black back­ground with white illu­mi­nated let­ter­ing will ensure a high con­trast which has a good read­abil­ity from a dis­tance. Other com­men color com­bi­na­tions are a yel­low back­ground with black let­ter­ing. For typog­ra­phy use a sans type like FF Info by Erik Spiek­er­mann or Frutiger by Adrian Frutiger. Use a font that have a high x-height which will increase the leg­i­bil­ity of the signs. Use only one font in all visual com­mu­ni­ca­tion lev­els of the air­port sig­nage. For inter­na­tional air­ports it is vital to use sym­bols to indi­cate the facil­i­ties in and around the air­port, always strengthen the sym­bol with writ­ten text in the native lan­guage and per­forably in Eng­lish lan­guage. This will ensure that most of the vis­i­tors can read the signs.

Dusseldorf Airport Signs FF InfoPhoto credit sabri­nak

Type­face FF Info

FF Info
Designed by Erik Spiek­er­mann and Ole Schäfer, FF Info Col­lec­tion offers a large vari­ety in type weights and pic­togram sets with a good leg­i­b­lity suit­able for air­port signs.

Arrow design

Arrows are one of the most impor­tant design fea­tures of a wayfind­ing sys­tem for air­ports, with a point­ing arrow you will be able to guide vis­i­tors to their des­ti­na­tion. Choos­ing a arrow within a design can make or break the design, don’t over due the arrow but gen­tly incor­po­rate the arrow into the sign in bal­ance with type. Recently I’ve released a arrow col­lec­tion to use in a design. Down­load the 56 free arrows as a Illus­tra­tor vec­tor file here.

Sign design using a grid

Always use a grid to design Sig­nage & wayfind­ing sys­tems in order to main­tain bal­ance and flex­i­bil­ity in the design. In a future arti­cle I will go in dept by explain­ing how to design sig­nage using a grid.

Inspi­ra­tion: Per­sonal favourites

Below you will find a show­case of my per­sonal 5 favourite air­port sig­nage designs. High con­trast illu­mi­nated signs, using clear lettering.

Seat­tle Air­port Signage

Airport signage and wayfinding inspiration

Sin­ga­pore Ter­mi­nal 3 air­port signage

Airport signage and wayfinding inspiration

Copen­hagen air­port signage

Airport signage and wayfinding inspiration

Schiphol Ams­ter­dam, Signage

Airport signage and wayfinding inspiration
Photo Cour­tesy: Mar­tijn van Exel, visit his web­site Schaal­treinen.

Mel­bourne Aus­tralia, Air­port Signage

Airport signage and wayfinding inspiration

Port­land Inter­na­tional Air­port Signage

Airport signage and wayfinding inspiration

More Air­port Signs Inspiration

Below a show­case of 19 more pho­tos of air­port sig­nage design.

Frank­furt Inter­na­tional Airport

Airport signage and wayfinding inspiration

Munich Air­port Signage

Airport signage and wayfinding inspiration

Zürich air­port signage

Airport signage and wayfinding inspiration

War­saw Air­port Signage

Airport signage and wayfinding inspiration

Sin­ga­pore air­port signage

Airport signage and wayfinding inspiration

Ataturk Air­port — Inter­na­tional Terminal

Airport signage and wayfinding inspiration

Oporto’s new air­port signage

Airport signage and wayfinding inspiration

Zürich basic signage

Airport signage and wayfinding inspiration

Berlin, Schöne­feld Air­port signage

Airport signage and wayfinding inspiration

Newark Inter­na­tional Airport

Paris — CDG Air­port Ter­mi­nal 2 Signage

Airport signage and wayfinding inspiration

Malaysia’s KLIA airport

Airport signage and wayfinding inspiration

Madrid Air­port Signage

Airport signage and wayfinding inspiration

Doha, Qatar

Airport signage and wayfinding inspiration

Thai air­port signage

Airport signage and wayfinding inspiration

Dubai air­port signage

Airport signage and wayfinding inspiration

Oax­aca City Airport

Airport signage and wayfinding inspiration

Incheon Inter­na­tional Airport

Airport signage and wayfinding inspiration

Ben­galuru Inter­na­tional Air­port Signage

Airport signage and wayfinding inspiration

Other infor­ma­tion & related resources

Bureau Mijk­se­naar has been proven to be a world leader in air­port sig­nage design, Paul Mijk­se­naar has designed air­port signs for John F. Kennedy, Newark and LaGuardia, Sardinia’s Italy and Schiphol. His designs can be marked as clear high con­trast signs. At Mijk­se­naars web­site you can find more detailed infor­ma­tion about these projects.

Com­ming up

Next arti­cle will be a design tuto­r­ial how to design air­port sig­nage, stay updated for more free design arti­cles, sub­scribe to the RSS feed.

Share your thoughts

I’m curi­ous to know which of the above men­tioned air­port sig­nage designs you like the best? Please leave a com­ment in the com­ment fields below. Thank you!



117 comments on ‘Airport Signage: Photo inspiration’

  1. vot.eti.me

    Air­port Sig­nage Design: Photo showcase…

    A photo show­case of air­port sig­nage & way­fid­ing design from aiports all around the world.…

  2. Design Bump

    Story on DesignBump.com…

    Your story was fea­tured in Design Bump! Here is the link to vote it up and pro­mote it: http://designbump.com/GraphicDesign/Airport_Signage_design_Photo_showcase...

  3. Photo show­case: Aiport Sig­nage Design…

    A photo show­case of Air­port Sig­nage & Wayfind­ing design, a inspi­ra­tion from Air­ports all over the world.…

  4. Knowtebook.com

    Awe­some! Thank you very much. Looks like you spend a lot of time for this.

  5. Sander Baumann

    Hi Sebas­t­ian — Thank you for your com­ment, appre­ci­ated. I enjoyed cre­at­ing this post very much, to gather & com­pile this inspi­ra­tion source as ref­er­ence work for air­port sig­nage was just fun to do.

  6. Vincent

    Nice post Sander, great sub­ject as always.

    I noticed how most of the sig­nage is Bright on Black, Schiphol is one of the few excep­tions. Funny how that works, most print­ing and web is the oth­er­way around. I love the edgy look of the Sin­ga­pore signage.

    Can’t for the tutorial!

  7. johno

    A great col­lec­tion. Look­ing for­ward to that arti­cle on sig­nage and the grid.

  8. cyhung

    very cool col­lec­tion. look­ing for­ward to the arti­cle.
    as i travel quite often, sig­nage is of inter­est to me.
    no one wants to be the lost trav­eler. :)

  9. […] Inspi­ra­tion is every­where. Design Work Plan has a good arti­cle, focus­ing on inspi­ra­tion from air­port sig­nage, with analy­sis and nice pho­tos. Read more about it. […]

  10. […] Visit Source. […]

  11. Jacob Cass

    Wow, a very detailed post. Looks like you spent ages on this, kudos. I know where to come back to if I ever need to do sig­nage work.

  12. […] par­tial to Madrid and Mel­bourne, and I’m think­ing after view­ing this show­case what a nice Flickr group the topic would make and, of course, a few already exist. My trek into […]

  13. Sander Baumann

    Hi Vin­cent — Thank you for your com­ment, appre­ci­ated. Most of the air­port sig­nage design­ers indeed has a black back­ground with white let­ter­ing. In a visual crowed envi­ron­ment this will attract the vis­i­tors atten­tion more than the other way around. At schiphol Mijk­se­naar used yel­low with black let­ter­ing for pri­mar­ily rout­ing, for sec­on­dar­ily rout­ing they used a blue/white and a black/white let­ter­ing. The signs com­bined will achieve a high pro­file guid­ance through­out the airport.

    Hi Johno — Thank you for stop­ping by! I’ll let you know when the arti­cle about sig­nage design is up and run­ning. Good luck with iLT.

    Hi cyhung — Wel­come here at DWP, thank you for your com­ment. I love to hear from you which color com­bi­na­tion you think works the best for Air­port Sig­nage. Thank you in advance.

    Hi Jacob Cass — Thanks very much for your com­ment, appre­ci­ated. Good luck with JCD.

  14. Rob Hofker

    What really struck me as odd is that despite all dif­fer­ences, some­times sub­tle, some­times not, the arrows are basi­cally all the same design. A square cor­ner on a stick.

    Funny!

  15. Marshall

    I’d be inter­ested to hear anyone’s expe­ri­ences with the sig­nage at Toronto’s new Ter­mi­nal 1. Per­son­ally, I find it the most con­fus­ing I’ve expe­ri­enced. There seems to be no uni­for­mity about the mean­ing of the var­i­ous arrows, and this, com­bined with some­what odd sign place­ment has had me wan­der­ing as if a lost for­eigner (I’m not) more than once. This is a brand new and expen­sive facil­ity, and I really won­der how they could have got­ten this one so wrong.

    Van­cou­ver (YVR) air­port, by con­trast is one of the best — in sig­nage and prac­ti­cally every­thing else. One has only to arrive here after a long inter­na­tional flight to expe­ri­ence the thought that went into pas­sen­ger com­fort. A light and airy rain­for­est awaits between your gate and cus­toms.. a real de-stresser.

  16. Vincent

    @7:
    Now you men­tion it, the bright on black makes sense, attracts more in a crowded environment.

    Btw, your links to Mijk­se­naar and Sign­web con­tain a “br”. Error!

  17. […] Flughafensignaletik rund um die Welt […]

  18. Sander Spek

    I’m not a sign designer, but I find the sign from Schiphol (Ams­ter­dam) some­what bad. It just looks to clut­tered, espe­cially com­pared to the other exam­ples. On the other hand, I’ve used them, and I never got lost there.

    The Port­land photo also con­fuses me. Are Tick­et­ing and Bag­gage Claim also straight, like All Gates? Or are they right here on this spot? Or maybe even to the right? I assume they are in the same direc­tion as All Gates, but in that case they should be grouped. (E.g. by a line sep­a­ra­tor, or by more blank space between them and the item to the right.)

    But all in all a nice overview.

    One last remark, if you’re design­ing sig­nage and want a to use a dif­fer­ent font, maybe con­sider Router from Jeremy Mickel (via Vil­lage, http://www.vllg.com/Incubator/Router/mudTyper+Weights/) I have never seen it in real life I think, but it surely looks nice in the spec­i­men. (Only the bold looks a bit too play­ful to my taste.) I wish I was a sign designer, just to have an excuse to buy it. More­over, I think Kris Sowersby’s National (also via Vil­lage, http://www.vllg.com/KLIM/National/mudTyper+Weights/) would also look great for signage.

    But again, I’m no sign designer, so take these rec­om­men­da­tions with caution.

  19. el norberto

    Con­grat­u­la­tions !!! send me newsletters

    From Mex­ico

  20. Erik

    Great post Sander! I snapped some pics a few months ago in Copen­hagen too. My per­sonal favourite is, still, CDG. Per­fect in it’s sim­plic­ity and I’m lov­ing the colourscheme.

  21. Sander Baumann

    Hi Rob Hofker — Thank you for your com­ment, indeed many of the arrows look alike. I’ve released a pack­age of 56 dif­fer­ent arrow to use in designs, see here for more information.

    Many of the sig­nage sym­bols have been taken from the Aiga Sym­bol Signs (where you can find the arrow as spec­i­fied in the designs).

    Hi Mar­shall — Thanks very much for your com­ment, appre­ci­ated. I found a image for the Toronto Ter­mi­nal 1 sig­nage, I can’t really tell how the way­ifind­ing is at the air­port, so can’t give you an answer at this time. Maby with some more images we could eval­u­ate the sig­nage system.

    Toronto Ter­mi­nal 1

    Van­cou­ver (YVR) air­port

    Thanks Vin­cent — for your com­ment, this color com­bi­na­tion works only when a lot of day­light can enter the build­ing. For instance in Schiphol there is not much day­light, a lighter color back­ground will attract more (Yel­low & Black). So the color com­bi­na­tion depends on the envi­ron­ment. Thank you for send­ing the email!

    He Sander Spek — Thanks very much for your com­ment! Long time no see, hope every­thing is fine. I believe Schiphol works good because of its design and its quan­tity, at almost every 50 metres is a big sign with pri­mairly infor­ma­tion. I believe the color com­bi­na­tion at Schiphol works bet­ter than a dark back­ground with white let­ter­ing, because of the low ceil­ing and the lim­ited amount of day­light avail­able in the build­ing. Good remark about the Port­land sig­nage, thanks for the men­tion of the fonts, I will def­i­nitely take a look at them.

    Hi el nor­berto — I don’t send out newslet­ters, but you could sub­scribe to the free RSS Feed.

    Thanks Erik — Thanks for your com­ment and the sup­port at Fontanel!

  22. Sander Spek

    Yes, every­thing is fine. I’m happy to see that you are blog­ging again too!

    You must be right about the Schiphol sig­nage, it never both­ered me in real life, and also after click­ing on the links you pro­vided I like it bet­ter. I think I just dis­like the sign you picked for your photo exam­ple. :)

  23. Sander Baumann

    LOL, thanks for the critic on the Schiphol photo :)

    I found a bet­ter photo of Schiphol Air­port Signage:

    Thanks again!

  24. LaurenMarie - Creative Curio

    The most inter­est­ing part for me was the moon instead of a cross for First Aid in the Ataturk Air­port. I remem­ber read­ing about the Red Cross/Red Cres­cent on Logo Design Love a while back. Maybe for convention’s sake, though, they should have the cross, too?

    Hehe, in terms of funny sig­nage, I find restroom signs can be odd or inter­est­ing some­times. In the Hon­olulu air­port in Hawaii, they have Hawai­ian print clothes and leis around their necks! Men’s, Women’s. Adds char­ac­ter, doesn’t it? Fun!

  25. Sander Baumann

    Hi Lau­ren­Marie — Thanks for the detailed men­tion of the Red Cross issue. Ataturk Air­port is in Istan­bul a Mus­lim coun­try where the use of the Red Cross is a Red Cres­cent. At the web­site of IFR the logo also has two sym­bols see also here. I don’t believe they will change this.

    I sim­ply love the toi­let sig­nage in Hon­olulu (it sends out a hol­i­day spirit!) and man­u­fac­tured using ADA com­pli­ant sig­nage rules. Thanks again for the men­tion, good luck with creativecurio.

  26. […] photo show­case of Air­port sig­nage & Wayfind­ing design, exam­ples from all over the world. View source //default ban­ner house ad url clicksor_default_url = ”; clicksor_banner_border = ‘#f8f7f0’; […]

  27. Fubiz

    Beau­ti­ful pictures!

  28. Findings 9.26.08 | 8164

    […] Air­port Sig­nage: Photo inspi­ra­tion — I’ve always loved typog­ra­phy and signs in the air­port. Because they tran­scend the lan­guage and cul­tural barrier. […]

  29. Calvin

    hey, the ‘Hong Kong Air­port Sig­nage’ is wrong, the lan­guage is in Malay, only found in Malaysia and Indone­sia, I think the air­port is non other than Malaysia’s KLCC airport.

  30. […] design blog design­work­plan has an intrigu­ing photo col­lec­tion of “wayfind­ing sys­tems” at air­ports worldwide. […]

  31. […] design blog design­work­plan has an intrigu­ing photo col­lec­tion of “wayfind­ing sys­tems” at air­ports worldwide. […]

  32. Chris Blow

    I was in Den­ver and was sur­prised that some of the ugli­est, most unusual sig­nage I had ever seen was the most useful!

    The wayfind­ing arrows actu­ally bend around the signs (yes, they are 3D) mak­ing them absolutely unam­bigu­ous (and hideous).

    Here’s a pic on my blog:

  33. Sander Baumann

    Hi Calvin — Thank you for the cor­rec­tion, Malay isn’t my strongest lan­guage ;-)

    Hi Chris Blow — Thank you for adding the image to the post. The arrows indeed seems a bit odd and hardly a good giv­ing direc­tion. Also the cho­sen type face looks like Hel­vetica, which is not really the most read­able type from a dis­tance, as you can see the let­ter “C” will look like “O” from a fair dis­tance and the let­terspac­ing have to be increased because wil “AIM” you will not see the “I” because it’s too close to the “M”. Do you have some more images? Thanks again for send­ing this example.

  34. Airport Signage | The Ad Feed

    […] Via DesignWorkPlan. […]

  35. […] of Air­port Sig­nage from cities all over the world, using the photo web­site flickr: A show­case of air­port sig­nage designs and wayfind­ing sys­tems. No Com­ments, Com­ment or […]

  36. […] A show­case of 20+ air­port sig­nage designs and wayfind­ing sys­tems Tags: aero­por­tos, artigo, design, sinalização […]

  37. […] design blog design­work­plan has an intrigu­ing photo col­lec­tion of “wayfind­ing sys­tems” at air­ports worldwide. […]

  38. […] designer Con­trast and Mean­ing Vec­tor draw­ing mistakes—a good les­son Cre­ative Suite 4 (CS4) fonts Air­port sig­nage Let­ter­press print­ing resources 60 inspir­ing con­cert posters Jason Santa Maria on con­fer­ence badge […]

  39. […] for a month dur­ing win­ter break from col­lege. Read more about it here. Check out more sig­nage here. Filed under: Info Graph­ics, Sig­nage Arti­cle tags: […]

  40. blog » Airport signage

    […] infor­ma­tion on this topic can be found at this excel­lent post. There’s some­thing about Munich I really […]

  41. Li Rui

    Thank you for the post. Just won­der­ing who designed Bei­jing Cap­i­tal air­port ter­mi­nal 3 sig­nage? I couldn’t find it. And love to have people’s opin­ion of the deign as well. Per­son­ally, I don’t really like it… it’s a bit bor­ing and colour doesn’t match the archi­tec­ture either.

  42. Jesse Smarty

    I’d like to make a cor­rec­tion to Chris Blow’s response above. The bag­gage claim sign with the curved arrows is actu­ally located in LAX Ter­mi­nal 7. I know this because I work for a wayfind­ing con­sul­tancy firm that is cur­rently replac­ing these signs with an updated sys­tem. Be on the look out :)

  43. […] Observer: Observed on 01 Oct 2008 Air­port sig­nage! Air­port sig­nage! Air­port sig­nage! (Via Coudal.) […]

  44. […] A show­case of 20+ air­port sig­nage designs and wayfind­ing sys­tems (tags: design sig­nage wayfind­ing acces­si­bil­ity signs resources typog­ra­phy inspiration) […]

  45. […] Filed under gen­eral Check out Sander Bauman’s review of air­port wayfind­ing sys­tems on Design Work Plan. Bau­man show­cases some favourite exam­ples and pro­vides help­ful point­ers on cre­at­ing good airport […]

  46. Sander Baumann

    Hi Lu Rui — Thank you for your com­ment. The archi­tect is Fos­ter + Part­ners, one of the largest archic­ture com­pa­nies in the world. Here is a direct link to the project. Pff. you can spend hours at that web­site, they have designed so much beat­i­ful build­ings. I’m almost sure they also man­aged the sig­nage & wayfind­ing sys­tem. But Bei­jing is not listed in this article.

    I think you mean Sin­ga­pore Changi Inter­na­tional Air­port, Ter­mi­nal 3, which is designed by archi­tect Wood­head. Also a superb com­pany. I believe the black sig­nage works well in the visual crowed envi­ron­ment. Thanks again for your comment.

    Hi Jesse Smarty — Thanks very much for your update on the air­port sig­nage for Den­ver. Is it pos­si­ble to send us a photo of the new installed sig­nage. I love to see the design. Thank you in advance.

  47. Chris Blow

    Thanks for the cor­rec­tion Jesse, you are right that I took the pic­ture in LA. It must’ve been a long flight!

  48. Chris Blow

    I should also clar­ify that, in per­son, the LAX 3D arrows are superbly use­ful. I think the per­son who designed them should get a gold star.

    Noth­ing like stand­ing under­neath a sign at a 4-hallway inter­sec­tion, look­ing up, and see­ing the arrows point­ing straight down at you.

    I wish there were 3d arrows in every airport.

  49. […] 2, 2008 what — what –check it: http://www.designworkplan.com/design/airport-signage-photo-inspiration.htm http://signweb.com/index.php/channel/7/id/1378 Posted by wes­ley “dan­ger” ebel­har Filed in […]

  50. […] a fan­tas­tic post on Sander Baumann’s ‘Design­work­plan’ about air­port sig­nage along with an inspired vec­tor col­lec­tion of arrows […]

  51. Elsewhere « Visualingual

    […] Air­port Sig­nage: Photo Inspi­ra­tion: just that. […]

  52. weno

    i just came back from trav­el­ling and i was also think­ing about the impor­tance of design to locate yourself.

    mainly with the icons… it’s an amaz­ing sub­ject. great post!

  53. […] an info-vis of 24 hours of global air traf­fic and an inter­est­ing visual overview on air­port wayfind­ing sig­nage. It’s good to see one of the clas­sics of that par­tic­u­lar field of design endeav­our mentioned […]

  54. Arijit

    Hi, great research indeed!
    i think that pic­togram (i mean icons) can come up as the most strong sig­nage tool if they are made con­sis­tent all over.

    i won­der in a short period of time, with hun­dreds of icons per direc­tions (like http://www.designworkplan.com/uploads/arrow-symbols-icons.png) we will land up a debate as which one is the best.

    do we really need so many variations?

  55. Sander Baumann

    Thanks Chris Blow — for explaining.

    Thanks weno — for your com­ment, aprreciated!

    Hi Ari­jit — thanks for your com­ment. I agree with you that sym­bols & icons are cross lan­guage, there­fore one of the most pow­er­ful ways to dis­play infor­ma­tion. Regard­ing the arrows, I believe that with so many fonts avail­able as many (hope­fully less) arrows will be used to com­bine with that par­tic­u­lar type­face. Thanks again for your com­ment, look­ing for­ward to a debate about arrow design.

  56. […] great photo show­case of air­port signs and wayfinding […]

  57. […] Design Work Plan design blog, has a nice arti­cle on wayfind­ing sys­tems. Some­thing that is often over­looked, until your try­ing to find out where your sup­posed to be at say an air­port (O’Hare any­body?) They give a nice quick set of guide­lines and accom­pany it with plenty of tasty pic­tures. This con­ve­niently comes out when I am just at the begin­ing of help­ing to cre­ate a new wayfind­ing sys­tem. As an added bonus they include a link to some arrow vec­tors, so head on over and take a look. […]

  58. James Kurtz III

    Zurich. FTW.

  59. cyhung

    i per­son­ally find that yel­low & black is one of the bet­ter com­bi­na­tions. blue is inher­ently a pas­sive color. so i tend to see them used for sec­ondary sig­nage. many US air­ports use black bgd and white texts. i came to expect that now.

    agree on use of sym­bols ONLY if they are already com­monly used. some vari­a­tions aren’t a prob­lem for me. but i do have some trou­ble with signs that are reduced to just sym­bols and arrows.

  60. Sander Baumann

    Thanks James — for your input, appre­ci­ated. I aree with you that Zur­cich is a great designed air­port sig­nage. Both in color, choose of type and sym­bols and over­all sig­nage design that works well together.

    Hi cyhung — Thanks for your com­ment, appre­ci­ated. Agreed that sig­nage designs only with sym­bols and arrows can work con­fus­ing. I believe sym­bols & icons have a be strenghten with native and Eng­lish text.
    About the color I agree with you that black sig­nage with white let­ter­ing works good in a visual crowed environment.

  61. Federica

    Hi Sander,
    My name is Federica.I’m con­tact­ing you because I need some impor­tant infor­ma­tion that can help me for my the­sis.
    I’m exam­in­ing some projects of com­mu­ni­ca­tion / sys­tem of wayfind­ing and pictograms/icons of parks, and sig­nage sys­tem in general.

    Do you Know some exam­ples that can help me?
    Federica

  62. Sander Baumann

    Hi Fed­er­ica — Thank you for your inter­est. I will be glad to help you in any way I can. I will send you a email. Thanks again.

  63. Anne Stewart

    Hi Sander!

    Great arti­cle. Just wanted you to know that I talked about in on my print design blog, here: http://www.hotcards.com/blog/2/284.html

  64. Sander Baumann

    Hi Anne Stew­art — Thanks very much for the men­tion in your arti­cle! Very appre­ci­ated and good readings.

  65. Andrea Bianchi

    Great post­ing!
    Your post is per­fectly aligned with the type of research we are doing on inter­faces and inter­ac­tion design, so one of our writ­ers added a link to your post on our blog (http://alsoplantsfly.com).
    I hope I’ll see more of this kind of post­ings: it was refresh­ing! Thanks again

  66. Sander Baumann

    Hi Andrea Bianchi — Thanks very much for putting up the arti­cle at your blog. Much appreciated.

  67. pelin ece

    thank you cris

  68. […] Check sig­nage spe­cial­ist Sander Baumann’s design­work­plan for more air­port signage. […]

  69. AJ

    Hello.

    I just want to say that you made a typo mis­take there.
    Malaysia’s KLCC air­port. it should be Malaysia’s KLIA airport.

    By the way, Nice collection!

  70. Sander Baumann

    Hi AJ — Heads up for the typo, I cor­rected it in the arti­cle. Thanks for your comment!

  71. Terry

    Hi,

    I’m doing a project on wayfind­ing of the van­cou­ver air­port. By any chance do you know who designed the way find­ing system?

  72. Sander Baumann

    Hi Terry — I’ve searched Google for the YVR wayfind­ing design and sig­nage sys­tem and have come up with the fol­low­ing resources.

    Wayfind­ing design by Bart Sciana, see this link for more infor­ma­tion.
    Sig­nage soft­ware sys­tem by Omnivex, see this link for more infor­ma­tion.

    Hope this infor­ma­tion will be of any help to you.

  73. Terry

    Thank You, Sander!

  74. […] Image from Sander Baumann’s exten­sive post on air­port sig­nage from design­work­plan. An inter­est­ing overview of multiple […]

  75. design masters

    Var­ied but slightly color tran­si­tioned signs in air­ports are ideal so peo­ple can deter­mine which way will they go and will not miss the flight. thanks for the post!

  76. kange kahnge raymond

    hi Mr. Bau­mann,
    I just stum­bled on this site — and am glad i did.it’s so refresh­ing going through your piece on air­port sig­nage. i am a grad­u­ate stu­dent of graphic design work­ing on devel­op­ing pic­tograms for wayfind­ing sig­nage in Niger­ian hos­pi­tals. I am a typ­i­cal ‘typophile’ with a strong ‘helvetica’indoctrination. my lec­turer told me years ago; “if every­thing else won’t work, use hel­vetica”! (good as it looks, i think the hel­vetica is overused!)My expo­sure to type is lim­mited to text­book knowl­edge but i know enough about using a sans type for my project! i have fallen in love with ‘calibri’(bold), which is
    close in sem­blance to the first pic­ture in your arti­cle. I am tempted to say so much…i look for­ward to more write-ups on sig­nage, i’ll glean quite a lot. Thank you

  77. Sander Baumann

    Wel­come kange kah­nge ray­mond — thanks for your com­ment, appre­ci­ated! If you want to share your project for signs in a Niger­ian Hos­pi­tal I am more than happy to com­bine them in a post here at DWP. If you are inter­ested please send con­tact me. What type­faces are you using for your hos­pi­tal sig­nage project?

    About using Hel­vetica is said alot, per­son­ally I find Hel­vetica not suit­able for sig­nage any­more, there are many sig­nage type­face avail­able. I always say if every­thing else won’t work use Aki­denz Grotesk, a type­face that has a Hel­vetica look & feel but is totally dif­fer­ent. Try it and you will see the dif­fer­ence. Thanks again.

  78. OGUNLADE OLUSEGUN ABIOLA

    Hi Mr Sander,i just got a chal­lenge that “it is bet­ter 2give than 2recieve.“I had always come 2search the web when­ever I need any information,but now,I just made-up my mind to join the crew of infor­ma­tion givers.Anyway,I am a stu­dent of ARCHITECTURE,OOU,Ibogun campus,Ogun State and my the­sis is going 2b on air­port design therefore,sincere appre­ci­ate all that made possible,all the infor­ma­tion in this page.Thanx

  79. Katelyn

    As a stu­dent try­ing to enter Graphic Design for col­lege, I am writ­ing an essay on Air­port Sig­nage. This was VERY help­ful! Thank you so much and GREAT article!

  80. […] A show­case of 20+ air­port sig­nage designs and wayfind­ing systems […]

  81. tulsa signs

    The main rea­son that white let­ters on dark back­grounds read well is the white tends to glow slightly to the eye out­side of the actual shape of the let­ter.
    This makes the let­ter appear slightly larger that they actu­ally are.

    The con­verse is also true of a white back­ground with a dark let­ter.
    The white slightly encroaches onto the black, mak­ing the let­ter appear slightly smaller than they are.

  82. Collette

    excel­lent! Cur­rently research­ing air­port wayfind­ing for work, this really helped!

  83. Nuprata

    Excel­lent arti­cle, very well put and research.

    I’m from Jakarta, and at a glance, the sig­nage design of Schiphol reminds me of Jakarta’s Air­port, Soekarno-Hatta (CGK). It shared the yel­low bright as back­ground and black type­faces / sym­bols. Unfor­tu­nately the sim­i­lar­ity ends there, as the design in CGK is not that good, even on the new Ter­mi­nal 3.

    Please see it for your­self at:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soekarno-Hatta_International_Airport
    http://www.jakartaairportonline.com/photo-gallery

    Cheers!

  84. Arlene

    I am look­ing for rec­om­men­da­tions for high-quality air­port sig­nage fab­ri­ca­tors in the U.S. (Cal­i­for­nia, if possible).

  85. Umoren Johnah

    request for desing pro­posal for com­plete air­port signage

  86. Sara Martinez

    These pic­tures were very help­ful for me; I’m plan­ning a school car­ni­val and have never been to the air­port before. This was the first site I clicked on and gave me the per­fect ideas I needed for what the signs really looked like! Excel­lent work, it was a bless­ing to me.

  87. Garry

    Detailed work man,I com­mend your efforts,kind of stuff which I really like !

  88. […] להגיע מא’ ל-ב’ – גלריית שלטי ניווט בתוך שדות תעופה ■תגיות: אתר / ביקורת / טיסה / כרטיס / ממשק / שדה תעופה / תעופה12345678 […]

  89. […] are many exam­ples of won­der­ful sig­nage sys­tems, per­haps nowhere more abun­dantly than in air­ports, these being a newer sort of pub­lic place into which much time, effort and mod­ern think­ing has been […]

  90. Carla Burkhart

    Mr. Bau­mann, I was inter­ested in know­ing if you know who did the sign design for the Madrid Air­port. I recently passed though there on business.

    • Sander Baumann

      Hi Carla,

      Thank you for com­ment­ing on the arti­cle. The wayfind­ing scheme and sig­nage design was done by The Brand Union, at their web­site there is a show­case of the project. See here. How did the over­all expe­ri­ence felt like? Could you eas­ily find your des­ti­na­tions within the air­port? Thanks.

  91. Carla Burkhart

    Dear Sander.…Having been in the sig­nage and wayfind­ing indus­try for more than 20 years, pri­mar­ily in the US, the last 4 years glob­ally, it is often dif­fi­cult to assess sig­nage sys­tems or wayfind­ing inter­na­tion­ally due to what is often con­sid­ered the norm for that par­tic­u­lar region. The rea­son for my ques­tion was, I felt it was dif­fi­cult to nav­i­gate this air­port, not only for myself but for most trav­el­ing there for the first time, or even for infre­quent trav­el­ers. I was curi­ous to know what type of firm did the design work, and what the para­me­ters typ­i­cally are for inter­na­tional design. Maybe we could have an offline con­ver­sa­tion. The biggest issue I think for most was clear­ing immigration…There was very lit­tle or no sig­nage about clear­ing immi­gra­tion or cus­toms. When peo­ple have short lay­overs ( 1 hr or less) you want to have clear direc­tion as to exactly what to expect and where…people exited the plane, and had “0” idea as to where or when or “if” they would ever see the cus­toms booth. Unfor­tu­nately, although I travel to and from Ger­many quar­terly, I have lim­ited expo­sure to the many inter­na­tional airports…and my com­par­i­son is some­what lim­ited to US exposure…however, Frank­furt Main, and other coun­tries typ­i­cally use immi­gra­tion icons to not only move peo­ple in the right direc­tion, espe­cially when lan­guage bar­ri­ers are present, but to con­firm to pas­sen­gers that they are mov­ing in the right direc­tion. The typ­i­cal inter­na­tional arrival is through one sin­gle cor­ri­dor, but this was not the case at Madrid. I fur­ther believe that air­port design, sim­i­lar to hos­pi­tal design, needs to serve peo­ple of the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor. Even under­stand­ing the air­port over­all was dif­fi­cult unless you read the pam­phlet prior to landing…I guess I was look­ing to under­stand the intent, and if this was typ­i­cal to Europe etc. Some­times I have to ques­tion if my obser­va­tion is biased based on what is typ­i­cal to the US.…I’m of the opin­ion that good expe­ri­ences for peo­ple are related to orga­nized well iden­ti­fied spaces.…Your thoughts would be appreciated.

  92. nizar

    excel­lent work u got here… very infor­ma­tive… i was just won­der­ing, in devel­op­ing an air­port signs & wayfind­ing sys­tems, is there a stan­dard size that needs to be complied.

  93. […] Air­port Sig­nage: Photo inspi­ra­tion Com­parte este post: […]

  94. Handy

    just got a project to redesign air­port sign and way-finders in Jakarta Inter­na­tional Air­port Ter­mi­nal 1. thank you for this web­site, since it helped so much in the ini­tial ideas and design. hope you can answer my ques­tions in the near future.

  95. Lydia

    Hi, I think the sign cat­e­gorised under the Malaysian Air­port actu­ally belongs to Changi Air­port, Singapore.

  96. […] Air­port Today Schipol Air­port is a model of excel­lence that has started a chain reac­tion of clear air­port sig­nage, whose influ­ence can be seen at air­ports such as Atlanta’s Harts­field, Denver’s, and […]

  97. garuff

    Lov­ing the debates on the site and i agree, sig­nage in vital espe­cially this day and age where trav­el­ing is sec­ond nature now.
    Colour, font, size and pic­tographs do need to be con­sid­ered and like many of you sug­gest, i think yel­low on black or the other way round.
    I love the Den­ver sig­nage but not sure if it suits the tar­get audi­ence, for instance, in a crowded place, busy, pan­icked — white on yel­low doesnt stand out, and the arrows are rather silly, but is pleas­ing to the viewer.

  98. deepak shangari

    splen­did col­lec­tion of spe­cialised sig­nage pro­gramme. I am thrilled to get such clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion on the net, great work and effort put in
    by the designers.

  99. Shreya

    Nice col­lec­tion here.
    I also quite like the way com­ments are weav­ing here and dis­cus­sions are tak­ing place. With the whole world shrink­ing and peo­ple from any­where trav­el­ling every­where… sig­nages play a very vital role.
    We are doing sig­nage designs for a museum in India.
    http://www.designflyover.com/
    There is a lot to do in this field.

  100. […] you are a fan of type, check out this show­case of air­port sig­nage for some design […]

  101. alessandro busi

    Hi Sander, great work! I’m real­iz­ing a research about typog­ra­phy in wayfind­ing (of air­ports above all). I want to talk about Heathrow (ter­mi­nal 5) because of its serif face but I can’t find the name of the type­face! I’ve been search­ing for so long…could you help me?

  102. Hayley Branston

    Alessan­dro,

    All let­ter­ing within the direc­tional sign sys­tem at Heathrow uses ‘BAA Sign’, a spe­cially designed sign­ing type­face exclu­sive to BAA.

    Hope this helps.

  103. Hayley Branston

    Dublin Air­port has renewed it’s sig­nage in the past year…another to add to the list.

    http://twitpic.com/rz90i

  104. alessandro busi

    thank you so much hayley

  105. Resource 1 | Katherine Dillon

    […] Air­port Sig­nage: Photo Inspiration […]

  106. Sign Inspiration vol.2

    […] design­work­plan ≫ Air­port Sig­nage: Photo inspiration […]

  107. […] Image: Air­port sig­nage. In Geo­t­y­pografika [Dig­i­tal image]. Retrieved Octo­ber 20, 2010, from http://www.designworkplan.com/design/airport-signage-photo-inspiration.htm […]

  108. […] instead the user expe­ri­ence design chal­lenges of Air­ports.  I found this nice col­lec­tion of air­port sig­nage at Design Work Plan and it is remark­able how con­sis­tent the over­all “user experience” […]

  109. Domingo

    Gra­cias por el blog es de bas­tante ayuda

  110. Brian Morris

    This arti­cle was most use­ful for a short story I am writ­ing set in an air­port. Good work.

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