New book on Wayfinding looks to be particularly great

Yesterday, at the National Building Museum bookshop, I picked up a copy of The Wayfinding Handbook by David Gibson and published by Princeton Architetural Press. It is an excellent tome, laying out the definitive framework for approaching the subject.

It's organized into four chapters: the discipline; planning wayfinding systems; design of wayfinding system; and practical considerations.


Image from a blog review at designnotes.info/?p=1694

I am quite fond of books that lay out the model approach for addressing projects. This book is it. All the images are in color which is a nice plus, and a major failing in the book Signage and Wayfinding Design: A Complete Guide to Creating Environmental Graphic Design Systems by Chris Colari.

The book edited by Craig Berger, Wayfinding: Designing and Implementing Graphic Navigational Systems, is also very good, with good images, but it doesn't lay out the way toward a structured approach in the same manner as The Wayfinding Handbook. The Berger book is a set of chapters by different authors and can be a bit spotty as a result, although the chapters on Transport Systems, Museums, College Campuses, Heritage and Parks, Hospitals and Urban Systems are each excellent. (He organizes these chapters on two dimensions: internal to structures and external, or outside.)

Speaking of books that lay out the thorough approach so that you don't necessarily need to take a number of courses in graphic design and advertising in order to understand how to go about initiating and/or managing branding-related processes, I also recommend Designing Brand Identity by Alina Wheeler and WorldBranding.