​​The team designed the station navigation
https://www.heroshots.nl/portfolio/stationseiland-amsterdam-centraal/

The signage layout is very poor. Arrows are aligned with the centre of the carrier, while the information is aligned with the top, which in some cases makes the arrows just dangle separately.

Scenarios with long names aren’t taken into account, which causes the text to merge with the distance and the arrow. I wouldn’t be afraid to break it into two lines.

The distance looks like a dock number or something similar. In fact, I didn’t immediately realise what it was meant to represent — metres, kilometres, or hours. It’s crucial to add units like km. Also, the fill should be reduced by 30%, and a placement principle should be established. At the moment, the distance is always on the right side of the direction, which creates an absurd result on left-facing signs: the distance appears visually disconnected from the arrow.

There’s no developed logic or principle for grouping the information. For example, if we already have direction and transport icons, why not also indicate tickets valid for the route right there? That would free up an entire sign.

Icons in their squares are currently more prominent than the names, when it should be the other way around. Write “Train”, “Bus”, “Metro”, “Tram”, and accompany them subtly with pictograms.

Conclusion: the navigation needs proper layout just as much as it needs logic and principles. Different scenarios must be tested before rolling out a solution.

——
KnowHowToDesign
https://www.youtube.com/@steblina
https://linktr.ee/steblina

How to Think About a Design Project

Imagine a supermarket comes to you with a brief to refresh the in-store design: price labels, door signs, signage, posters, promotions, display stands, baskets. To create messaging, a tone of voice, layouts, visual emphasis, and supporting illustrations.

If you try to look at all of this as a single unit of design, your brain gives up. But if you look at it as a system — where every new element follows a set of rules — it becomes far easier to bring everything under one roof.

For instance, all carriers can be broken down by:
— location;
— message type;
— scale;
— function.

From a systems perspective, it doesn't matter whether we're looking at a poster, a sign, or a price label. We introduce a series of rules. An example of carrier rules:
1. No larger than A4.
2. Not used in exterior spaces (or: "used adjacent to product").
3. Contains promotional information.
4. Includes a call to action.

Alongside these, we attach copy and image constraints: no more than 5 words in the headline, 10 words in the subline, and a single illustration (or icon).

This means that shelf talkers, promotional stickers, wobblers, stoppers, danglers, and similar POS materials all receive their own visual and formatting constraints. Price labels or mobiles, on the other hand, fall outside this group — either because they carry operational information, or because they exceed the size limit.

From rules like these, a cross-reference table is built (think bingo card). So if a staff member wants to print an A3 shelf talker, they'll immediately see it falls outside the system — and that they need to either produce a poster and mount it on the wall, or reduce the size.

This is a simplified example, of course — in practice, constraints also account for material, how temporary the information is, urgency, and so on.

Stroke trimmer

I made a simple tool that trims part of a path. I needed it for drawing icons, when an outline shouldn't reach certain areas. Might be useful for you too.

Installation (before opening Illustrator)

1/
Unpack StrokeTrimmer into ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP/extensions/ (Mac) or C:\Users...\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CEP\extensions\ (Win).

2/
The panel is unsigned, so you need PlayerDebugMode: on Mac — defaults write com.adobe.CSXS.12 PlayerDebugMode 1 (if your Illustrator is older, replace 12 with 11).

3/
Restart Illustrator → Window → Extensions → Stroke Trimmer.

The purpose of a pictogram is to be recognisable by its distinctive shape. The plasticity of the graphics allows you to tell an aeroplane from an arrow quickly and effortlessly.

By placing a pictogram inside a square, you unify its shape and cancel out the characteristics built into it. The eye has to overcome one more graphic obstacle in order to read the pictogram. The eye prefers to ignore the icon, so as to spend less effort making sense of the image. Because of the shared outer shape, the icons become uniform and impersonal.

The same applies to round backings beneath an icon. This mistake is typical of designers who cannot work competently with free forms, and who get lost when alignment has to be optical rather than to a little square. The only compromise: make the backing barely noticeable.

Preserving the icon's original shape guarantees that it works.

The irradiation effect (blooming)

Light objects on a dark background (inverted) will always appear larger in size than the same dark object on a light background. This is down to the structure of the eye: a heavily illuminated photoreceptor affects the neighbouring receptive fields; the zone of excitation on the retina becomes wider than the optical image. As a result, we see the light shape spilling out beyond its own boundaries.

This is precisely why any fine serifs get lost, absorbed by the halo of the thick strokes.

So, then. This needs to be compensated for in wayfinding, because internally illuminated media are often used (+2 to the halo). For white text we choose a weight one step lighter than for black. For example, bold for black, and medium for light.

Image A shows an example of how white appears optically thicker. I've added extra halo to the lower caption to illustrate the merging effect. In image B everything has been compensated for.