"Museum-This Way"

Sometimes, this traveler seeking downtown feels like the Energizer Bunny marching endlessly on a huge tabletop full of obstacles. Bumping into them, going around them, sensing the need to change directions are daily occurences. Once in a while, just as the Bunny teeters perilously close on the edge, a new concept--a new direction--calls and he is saved for the short term.

Okay, a little overblown, but it sure feels good when a solution to a sticky problem volunteers itself. For example:

Having arrived at the point of understanding that communication is a major component of putting the community back into downtown (hmmm, communication...community) the study group was analyzing how to get information out. Make specific tourist topic brochures. Duplicate a map of artist locations. Print a handbook of historic building walks. Distribute them to various appropriate locations.  Overwhelming–– when comes to the rescue, fanfare please: "Wayfinding."

Wayfinding has grown rapidly out of the burgeoning area of graphic spacial applications. Companies specialize in it, universities teach it, the government issues grants for it. Wayfinding begins with signage, and in my generation, the Dark Ages, that meant those shoe-leather brown signs with cream-colored type that say "Museum." Well, not any more. Wayfinding at its best is a form of story telling, and it can direct and interpret various threads in the fabric of our cities. (For an eloquent description, see Municipal Wayfinding and the Visitor Experience by Mark Denton of fd2s, a Wayfinding and Environmental Graphic Design Firm based in Austin, TX.)

This is not to say that it is easy. You have to have your branding and graphics in place, target markets nailed, historical and cultural attractions inventoried, and signage zoning updated. And then, you still have to storyboard what you want to tell. But what you don't have to do is depend exclusively upon paper brochures or elusive web sites to be kept in inventory and discovered for people to find their way. Wayfinding is woven into the fabric in the community.

Sounds like a plan to me. Just be sure to put in the RFP that it can't be shoe-leather brown.