The Importance of Signage

I’ve been thinking about this one on & off for a few days. Something that’s vastly better about the public transport in London as opposed to Birmingham or elsewhere is the quality and quantity of the signage.

I was sitting on a London Overground train – which on a tangential point had departed from Brondesbury station, which has been very nicely refurbished and repainted following the TfL takeover – and I had a sudden realisation that I wasn’t even really sure I was on the right train, going to the right place.

On a Tube train, there’s pretty much always a map of the line somewhere in your eyeline, and the station you’re at or travelling to is clearly signposted by signs on the station platform itself, the recorded  station announcements, and the scrolling matrix displays. It’s almost impossible to lose track of where you are, so much so that you can master the Zen of Tube Travel and completely conk out on a trip back, waking up just at the right station.

On this Overground train I was totally lost – the station names weren’t announced, the stations were inadequately signed, and there were very few maps on display.

Which got me thinking about how important all this kind of stuff is.

For instance, the bus maps displayed at bus shelters are no end of useful, as they show not only the routes serving the local area, but a small street map showing the location of nearby bus stops. This is useful above and beyond simply finding buses, as it also gives the pedestrian both a map and a point of reference from which to navigate. It makes travelling around London a heck of a lot more pleasant, even when you’re going somewhere you’ve never been before.

However, travelling large distances on foot in London is still difficult. Using tube and bus maps for long-distance walks, or even short hops can be unhelpful because of the distortion of distances and positions to convey the networks in a simpler way.

So, rather handily, they’ve instituted a project called Legible London which aims to install good pedestrian signage across London to make pedestrian naviagation simpler and more intuitive, by capitalising on research into how we naturally navigate, i.e. forming mental networks of routes between landmarks. It’s very interesting stuff, and a prototype has been installed around the Bond Street Station / Oxford Street area.

Which might help certain people (who shall remain unnamed) realise that there is no actual street called Bond Street. To be fair, it’s a fairly common mistake