It was just after sunset when I arrived at the University of Albany campus. I was there for a meeting to help a group of students form a university Toastmasters club, and, as I exited the parking lot, I was struck by two things: there was no wayfinding signage indicating where any given hall was—and, in fact, all the buildings looked identical. Wandering aimlessly in the dark for a while, I finally had to ask a cluster of students where “X Hall” was, and fortunately I was not too late for the meeting. Rinse and repeat a couple hours later when I spent a good amount of time roving the campus like the Flying Dutchman trying to find the parking lot. (This was about 12 years ago, so the situation may have improved since then.) 

We’ve all likely had similar experiences with “wayfinding fails,” but there is no doubt that clear, accurate directional signage is perhaps the most important element in signage for educational institutions—or at least should be. (See Mark Vruno’s recent feature for some design tips for wayfinding signage.) But while wayfinding is perhaps the most conspicuous element of signage in education (or perhaps it’s most conspicuous when it’s absent) there are many other opportunities for signage and display graphics providers to serve institutions of higher education.

Another highly conspicuous example of signage in education is sports-related graphics. In our April issue, I wrote about the winner of this year’s FASTSIGNS Project of the Year Award. (Look for it on WhatTheyThink next week.) FASTSIGNS York (Pa.) did a complete overhaul of the graphics for the Shippensburg University football program. The project served a practical purpose: it was designed in part to attract athletes as part of the program’s recruiting drive. FASTSIGNS York had performed similar projects for Shippensburg University’s other athletic programs. While colleges and universities have myriad signage and display graphics needs, the athletic department can be a good entry into a university and is often a voracious consumer of display graphics.