A wayfinding system that doubled foot traffic in six months.
A 14-week engagement covering identity, signage, and a printed catalogue system for a 40,000-volume public library.
Three buildings, one identity.
The library had grown across three city-block buildings over forty years, with three different signage vendors and at least four mutually contradictory floor-numbering systems. Patrons spent an average of 4.2 minutes orienting themselves.
Our job: reduce that to under one minute, without closing the buildings.
Map first. Letters second.
We started with three weeks of ride-alongs with librarians. Every patron question got logged. Patterns emerged: the most common queries were not about books, they were about restrooms, exits, and the children section.
The new signage system foregrounds those three queries on every wall. The custom typeface, Lantern Sans, was drawn to be legible at 30 metres in low light.
The same hallway, eight months apart.
"Northbound treated our librarians as the primary research subjects, not the buildings. That is why the system works."