Construction and Design Manual: Wayfinding and Signage
Philipp Meuser & Daniela Pogade eds
DOM Publishers 304pp HB £65

In a world dominated by time-saving, we are increasingly pressurised to make decisions quickly with only the information to hand. This affects the design of everything, from a website to our physical environment. The general rule seems to be that the easier they are to navigate, the more successful they are.  Cue the second edition of DOM’s book on the subject – in handy shocking pink in case you misplace it. After some neat introductory essays, it provides some beautifully ordered case studies (as you’d expect really) of signage and wayfinding across Germany and Austria. Visually seductive, the book does beg the question of how your average Italian, Spanish, Chinese or African would respond to this Teutonic visual rigour. That is the subject for another title perhaps, but you know what they say, ‘Vorsprung durch Technik’...