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Ten Signage Design Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Most signage problems are not exotic. The same ten mistakes appear in hospitals, offices, campuses and shopping centres, and they appear because each one seems reasonable at the time. Here they are in the order they usually cause trouble, with what to do instead.

1. Mounting the sign after the decision point

The sign that tells you to turn left is on the wall just past the turning. It was mounted where there was a convenient blank wall rather than where the decision is made. Visitors sail past, see it, and double back. Fix: walk toward each junction and mount the sign where you first look for one, which is a few metres before the choice.

2. Too many destinations on one sign

Eight or nine lines because the junction serves eight or nine places. Past four or five, people stop scanning and start guessing. Fix: group by direction, cap at five, and add a second sign further along for the rest.

3. One place, three names

The directory says Outpatients, the door says Clinic B, the appointment letter says the Day Unit. No sign can rescue this. Fix: audit every surface a visitor reads and settle on one name, then change the others. It is the highest-value hour in any signage project.

4. Text too small for the viewing distance

The sign looked fine on the desk. At twelve metres down a corridor the lettering is unreadable. A working rule is roughly one inch of capital height per twenty-five feet of viewing distance, so a sign read from fifty feet needs two-inch capitals. Fix: decide where the sign will be read from before deciding how big it is.

5. Low contrast and glossy finishes

Grey on silver, white on pale yellow, or any colour behind a glossy acrylic that catches the ceiling lights. Fix: hold text and background to at least a 4.5 to 1 contrast ratio, use matt or non-glare finishes, and check the sign under the building's real lighting, not the studio's.

6. Decorative typefaces

The brand font is a condensed serif with beautiful ligatures. On a sign read at speed it is a smear. Fix: a plain sans serif for all wayfinding text, in sentence case or capitals, with the brand typeface reserved for the building name over the door.

7. Arrows that break the convention

An upward arrow used for upstairs, or a right-pointing arrow sitting on the left of its text. Visitors read arrows with the convention they arrived with, and any deviation costs them a beat. Fix: up means straight ahead, arrows sit on the side they point to, one arrow per direction.

8. Colour as the only code

Follow the red line, on a scheme where red and green are the two main routes and one man in twelve cannot tell them apart. Fix: every colour is paired with a name and, ideally, a letter or icon, and the pairing appears on the sign itself.

9. Ignoring the regulatory colours

Green for the paediatrics wing, in a building where green already means fire exit. Visitors follow the wing colour into a stairwell. Fix: learn the safety colour set before choosing a wayfinding palette, and keep the two visibly different.

10. Nobody owns it afterwards

The scheme was correct on the day it was installed and began drifting the following month. Departments moved, replacement signs were matched by eye, notices multiplied around the junctions. Fix: a one-page standard, a named owner, a quarterly walk. And for the information that changes, department names and directories, put it behind something you can edit rather than something you reprint. That is the layer QRCodeMaps handles, from $99 a month with a free trial.