Wayfinding and Floor Maps That People Can Read

Wayfinding is invisible when it works. When it does not, it shows up as a session that starts five minutes late because a third of the room was in the wrong corridor, and as a stream of people asking your staff the same question all morning.

Sign the decisions, not the walls

Walk the route an attendee takes, from the street. At every point where they have to choose — a junction, a lift, a staircase, a fork in a foyer — there must be a sign that answers "which way". Between those points, no signage is needed. Most events do the opposite: a dense sign at the entrance and nothing at the three junctions afterwards.

Name rooms in one system

Pick either the venue's names or your own, and use that everywhere: on the agenda, in the app, on the signs, in the emails, in the speaker briefing. Two naming systems — "Hall 2 / The Turing Room" — guarantee that half your signage disagrees with your programme. If you must use both, put both on every sign and in every listing, always in the same order.

Sign design that works at a glance

• One message per sign. A sign with five lines is read by nobody in a moving crowd.
• Arrows, large. Direction first, name second.
• Eye height or above. Below waist height a sign is behind a person within ten minutes of the doors opening.
• High contrast, large type. Also an accessibility requirement.

What belongs on the floor map

1. The rooms, named exactly as the agenda names them.
2. Registration, toilets, cloakroom, catering.
3. Exhibition or sponsor stands, numbered to match the exhibitor list.
4. The quiet room and first aid.
5. A "you are here" marker on every printed copy that is displayed — a map without one is a puzzle.

Orientation matters: the map should point the way the reader is facing, not north.

Digital maps are for planning, printed ones are for navigating

People use a digital floor map the night before and at the moment they get lost — which is the moment their signal is worst. Put the map on the event site as an image that loads fast, and print large copies at the junctions. The two do different jobs and neither replaces the other. Our piece on whether you need an event app covers the same trade-off more broadly.

Brief the humans

For the first hour, put a person at each of the two worst junctions. They will answer more questions than every sign combined, and they will tell you at lunchtime exactly which sign is missing — which is the note that improves next year.

Gathervo publishes an interactive floor map alongside the agenda, with stands linked to the sponsors and exhibitors who occupy them. Try it free.