Found attempts to bring an open-source ideology to the design and implementation of wayfinding systems, thereby allowing for greater integration of wayshowing design with community identity and hopefully increasing communal interactions.
Firstly, what is wayfinding? The best way to answer this is to think of the last time you travelled through the city—how did you know where you were going? You probably made use of a wide variety of wayfinding systems. For instance, if you went to meet your friends at a new bar, you probably looked up the address online, caught the train into the city, and made your way from the train station to some little back alley.
At each point, you've made use of the wayfinding systems installed within the city—traditional street signs are the most visible part, but so is Google Maps. So are the signs in the train station that tell you where the exit is. So are the innumerable cues you receive from the environment that hint at how you should go about navigating the space. The art of crafting these cues, however invisible or explicit they may be, is called wayshowing.
“Wayshowing relates to wayfinding as writing relates to reading and as speaking relates to hearing. The purpose of wayshowing is to facilitate wayfinding.”
—Per Mollerup1Wayshowing: A Guide To Environmental Signage Principles and Practice (Baden, Switzerland: Lars Müller Publishers, 2005)