Mending Our Ways at NYUAD

Wayfinding – quite aptly also called Environmental Graphic Design – is the term employed in architecture and design to refer to the design and application of information systems that assist people in navigating modern, complex, urban landscapes. Think about maps, diagrams, pictograms, and GPS: that’s wayfinding. Wayfinding entered the curriculum of NYUAD in the spring of 2015 with the offering of an elective class named ‘Finding the Way’. It then became a Core class simply named ‘Wayfinding’.

“Mending our ways” is a selection of Wayfinding proposals made by students from the 2015-2020 sessions of the class taught by Goffredo Puccetti, “Wayfinding: Graphic Design in the Built Environment”. Each proposal outlines a Wayfinding issue on the NYUAD campus, includes possible solution(s) to that issue, as well as a “Takeaway” section written by the author of the project that acts as a summary and commentary to the project. This book project was initiated to showcase the vast body of Wayfinding student works made over six years that have remained largely unknown to the NYUAD community and to bring to attention the Wayfinding and Accessibility issues that currently exist on our campus.

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