"So, You're Lost in the Airport: New York Airport Signage"

Saturday, June 9, 2001

So, You're Lost in the Airport
Meet the Information Designer in New York Who's Taking the Jungle Out of the
Signs
By Patricia Leigh Brown
The New York (NY) Times


NEW YORK - Anxiety in New York City is attainable at many convenient
locations, from curbsides with incomprehensible parking regulations to
Friday afternoon traffic on the Long Island Expressway. But there is no
better introduction to the chaotic nature of the city than its airports.

"New York airports were among the most confusing in the world," said Paul
Mijksenaar, the 57-year-old Dutch designer who has been brought in by the
Port Authority to redo the city's obtuse airport signs.

"There was no system. They resembled - how do you say it? - the apocalypse."

As an information designer, Mr. Mijksenaar's specialty is taming chaos. Over
the last two years, he has begun to turn the perplexing welter of signs at
Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark into an orderly series of transitions that
will ultimately replace more than 5,000 dated and confusing ones, easing the
way for some 90 million travelers each year.

His Amsterdam-based firm, Bureau Mijksenaar, is responsible for the signs at
Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands, which is consistently rated by
travelers as the most well-organized airport in the world.

His arrival in New York was precipitated by a survey for the Port Authority
three years ago by J.D. Power Associates, a marketing firm. It revealed that
among the hassles at the three major New York airports, getting lost because
of confusing directions was second only to unclean restrooms as the most
irksome problem.

At Kennedy, for instance, there was no sign telling newcomers how to get to
Manhattan. "No sign to Manhattan!" Mr. Mijksenaar recalled. "Only to the Van
Wyck Expressway! What is this Van Wyck? You didn't see the word 'Manhattan'
until the Midtown Tunnel." (Signs for Manhattan have since been erected.)

J.D. Power's worldwide survey of intelligible airport graphics led directly
to Mr. Mijksenaar, who was in New York one day recently for the opening of
Terminal 4 at Kennedy, which features his new signs. (The Port Authority has
spent $2 million on Mr. Mijksenaar's new signs, with plans to erect more
throughout all three airports by the end of next year.)

At the three airports, his mission is daunting: 17 separate terminals with
some 300 directional signs each, including signs for garages, airport roads
and parking lots. Most terminals are leased to individual airlines with
competing agendas and graphics.

The old signs, dating from the early '70s through the late '80s, almost
always had white letters on dark grounds, and were indistinguishable from
one another.

"Their solution was to put up more signs and more signs and more signs," Mr.
Mijksenaar said. "So it ended up being a contradictory mess."

The initially skeptical Port Authority came around after J.D. Power devised
a controlled experiment at concourses A and B at La Guardia two years ago.

Some 400 passengers were polled as they streamed past signs, half of them
the old variety and the other half designed by Mr. Mijksenaar. His signs
scored a blockbuster 4.19 out of 5. "The new signs are perpendicular to the
concourse," said Michael Taylor, the director of travel services at the
firm, "so you can see them in your normal cone of vision. The old signs you
had to be right on top of. You had to go find them, instead of the signs
telling you where to go."

Mr. Mijksenaar also videotaped in Hitchcockian detail the experience of a
typical passenger who pulls into the parking garage at Terminal 3 (Delta) at
Kennedy.

"They were really astonished," he said. For starters, there was no sign at
the entrance telling people they were at Terminal 3.

Mr. Mijksenaar retraced the grim itinerary of his video in person the other
day, pausing every so often to point out inhospitable touches as he walked
quickly down a gum-studded walkway aromatic with bus fumes.

The most vital information for departing flights was barely visible beneath
a "Roof Parking" sign. He pointed out a sign for Level A. "Whoever heard of
Level A?" he asked. "It should be 'ground level.' People are not stupid!"

"Imagine it's your first time in New York," Mr. Mijksenaar said. "You've had
nice stewardesses, and now, no one is caring for you. The message is,
'You're on your own here.' It's frightening."In contrast, his elegant new
designs are backlit, legible and color-coded. Mr. Mijksenaar configured the
signs in three different modes based on the emotions of travel.

The first and most important is "the flying mode, the panic mode, the most
nervous mode," used to direct passengers to the gate and from the plane to
their baggage. These are yellow with black lettering, the brightest color
and the color of caution and warning.

Studies on airport use have shown that when people are in a hurry, they tend
not to read. They also walk with only a 32-degree line of sight and look
slightly downward.

To get their attention, Mr. Mijksenaar uses contrasting colors. Green is an
easy color, he said, as it is "natural." It is also common on American road
signs. So he uses it to indicate exits. "It's the 'I want to go home' mode,"
he said.

Yellow letters on dark gray indicate the "waiting mode, the time-to-kill
mode." These signs direct travelers to the restrooms or airport malls.

Eliminating jargon was a major part of his New York mandate. He replaced the
words "courtesy van," for instance, with "free hotel shuttle," "because
that's what it is," he said. "Long-term" and "short-term" parking were
replaced with "daily" and "hourly."

Information areas are now marked with a double pictogram that combines the
question mark typically used in the United States with the "i" used in
Europe, resulting in a rather existential new sign: "i?"

Mr. Mijksenaar sometimes finds himself at odds with architects. "Architects
fear visual clutter," he said. "They think their buildings should speak for
themselves. But how can you find a restroom that speaks for itself?"

Mr. Mijksenaar, who lives in a suburb of Amsterdam with his wife, Ellen, and
two sons, seems to have been destined for his obscure profession. "I love to
travel," he said, "but am easily lost. I am always losing my way. Maybe I'm
too big a dreamer. So I'm filling in my own weakness."

In 1963, while he was an art student at Gerrit Rietveld Academy in
Amsterdam, the British highway authority introduced road signs that offered
elegantly simple depictions of complex roundabouts.

"It was a shock for me that road signs could be nice and good looking," he
said.

Mr. Mijksenaar, now a professor at Delft University of Technology, designed
the signs for Schiphol Airport in 1991.

Other public spaces bearing his mark are the subways in Amsterdam and
Rotterdam, and the Dutch railway, Nederlandse Spoorwegen.

He is currently redesigning immigration identity forms, with pictograms that
eliminate language barriers, and is studying the "tax form of the future"
for the Dutch government.

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