In our increasingly interconnected society, it is essential to design for diverse audiences and multiple languages. In many occasions the environments users navigate through must cater for their varied cultural backgrounds. With this in mind, the MACD wayfinding project provides design education that directly tackles these challenges.
In 2024, the project addressed the needs of users navigating bilingual dual script spaces. This allowed students to take advantage of the Department’s unique expertise in global scripts, and the diverse community of postgraduate students in Typography & Graphic Communication.
Students designed dual language wayfinding systems for indoor and outdoor environments, supported through contributions from leading figures in the field of typeface design, pictogram design and wayfinding. Notably, David Brezina’s talk addressed the anatomy of world scripts and compatibility with the latin script. David graduated from the MA Typeface Design in 2007 and is a leading figure in the design of global scripts through his foundry Rosetta. He is a regular contributor to the MACD. Additionally, Anita Meier-Walter from Moniteurs Berlin offered valuable insights into pictogram design within the context of wayfinding projects. Studio visits to Maynard and Applied provided the opportunity to learn from real-world bilingual projects, and to reflect on the challenges of helping people navigate large scale spaces, such as university campuses and busy transport hubs.
By combining English and a non-latin script of their choice, many students were able to work in their native language and address specific challenges of designing with scripts spanning Traditional Chinese characters, Japanese writing system, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Arab and Greek. See some these student projects here and here.
The Wayfinding project is open to MA Communication Design students of the Information Design and Graphic Design pathways.