System Design

Color as Navigation: How Wayfinding Systems Use Color to Move People

Hospitals use color to reduce wrong-turns and medical errors. Airport terminals use color to compress decision time. Transit maps use color to make millions of routes cognitively manageable. Environmental graphic design — the field that designs these systems — has developed a body of principles for color as navigation that most digital designers have never encountered. This issue covers the core principles and how they translate to digital product wayfinding.