China High-speed Railway Beijing South Station Signage System

Client: The Ministry of Railways of China

Project: China Railway High Speed Beijing South Station Signage System Design, 2007 - 2008

Design Director：Xiaobo Lu

• There were 4 design teams in this project: Information Design, Industrial Design, Graphic Design, Copywriting Teams.

• More than 45 designers worked on this project.

My Role: Led the information design team of 4 designers and collaborated with other 3 teams. Conducted design research / legibility testings and delivered Design Research Report. Participated writing and formulating the Railway Passenger Information Signage System Graphic Signs and Elements Design Application Norm.

I led Information Design throughout the whole design process from the beginning to the end. The project started from 2007 and the implementation ended in 2009. As my work integrated with every detail of design, I didn’t divide the design into 3 phases (graphic design, industrial design and information design) as we normally think it would be. What I am going to present here is my own experience in this project - It’s about three essential things to deal with:

1. Where - Signage Location

2. What - Information content

3. How does it look like - Signage form

Client provided Beijing South Station initial plan for existing 3 floors: elevated floor (ticket windows, waiting areas), ground floor (boarding gates, station platforms, out bound, exchange), underground floor (garage). Based on the initial plan, the team carried out the space planning specifically for each floor.

1. Identified all usable space units.

2. Grouped those space units with similar features as different functional areas.

3. Marked connections / relationships between each functional area.

The intersection on each flow contains the information that users need to make decisions. These intersections are the places where the user must make decision of direction, that is, the decision points. The decision point along the circulation route should be located at the position where the direction needs to be changed and the position where passengers face the choice. Determine the location of the decision point along the road to determine the location of the signage information unit. Each decision point includes: 1. information needed by passengers at this location, 2. information in front of this decision point, 3. location information of the destination.

After determining the location and number of signs, the next task is to determine the information content displayed on each sign. No matter what type of information content, it needs to be clearly communicated to users. The design of the content is mainly reflected in the relationship between the functions and levels of information. The function of information determines the type of information, and the level of information distinguishes the degree of importance. This is also a feature shared by other media forms.

Design proposal listed below shown the different information hierarchy in the order of first-level information, second-level information and third-level information.

Various legibility testing were conducted and design research report was delivered to support the whole design project.

While consulted multiple data sets, and research reports on the visual size of symbols and texts in various countries, we conducted our own field researches based on Beijing South Railway Station. After several months analysis, we concluded a set of minimum visual sizes for Chinese characters, English, numbers, and graphic signs that are suitable for large-scale domestic train hubs.

1. Chinese: 25m viewing distance, the height of Chinese characters should not be less than 10cm.

2. English: 25m viewing distance, letter height should not be less than 7cm.

3. Number: 25m viewing distance, the height of the number should not be less than 7cm.

4. Graphic sign: 25m viewing distance, graphic height should not be less than 15cm.

Determining the location of the sign includes not only the location in space, but also the height and angle of the sign. It also includes the relationship between the number of signs and the space utilization, the number of signs and the distance.

Graphic Design

Of course, the research conclusion data is for the minimum visible distance. The actual design should consider the comprehensive factors such as the building environment and the size of the passenger flow to determine the final size of the text. The size of the font and the length of the message not only determine the size of the text field itself, but also the size of the entire signage plate.

**Information Design team contribution at this stage: Supported and provided specific data when it’s in the graphic design stage. In addition to size issues, around legibility and clarity, the form of text information also includes font, capitalization, thickness, word spacing, line spacing, and lighting effects. Graphic sign information involves the shape, color, image semantics, arrow etc. of the symbol.

The setting of signage and the expression of information on the signage are necessarily related to the height from the floor to the ceiling and the size of the sign. The appearance of the signage should be coordinated with the building and space environment where it is located. The final signage is determined when the plate size and the facility appearance must be integrated to ensure the visual consistency.

Industrial Design Team proposed three design options. Below is one of the design proposals for the project.

The form and appearance also involve arrow design, color contrast, visual distance, different light conditions and best visual distance, different forms of signs and visual height, angle deformation, light diffusion, symbol use, sign lighting, internal glowing and external lighting problems.

**In the Industrial design process, Information Design Team conducted tests for settings with various light conditions. Design must not only consider the light conditions in the ideal environment, but also the minimum visible distance corresponding to each inch of character height in the poor environment. In poor visual environments, the ratio is reduced to: each inch of character height corresponds to 12 feet of viewing distance.