This corporation builds large, modular structures for workforce accommodations with kilometres of corridors, and for the new guests, the hallways can be pretty anonymous. My first trip up to one of the oilsands lodges, I got turned around more than once. I’m sure a half-asleep worker coming on or off shift would go through the same thing.
The first piece to develop was the icon system, based on international standards for airports and national parks. Some were custom designs for the company’s unique offerings.
As mentioned, the hallways can look the same, no matter which way you’re going, so I chose to make all signs leading away from the central core of a lodge to be white, and all signs leading to the core blue. It was a simple and clear way to orient our guests to which way they were going.
Taking the icons, they were applied to signage banners deployed overhead at key intersections, up and out of the way of the frequent herds of workers coming on and off the buses. With corridors being hundreds of metres long, we made sure to always have a banner in sight. Without the signage providing visual cues, you could easily head for the emergency exit instead of towards the central cores and the lodge’s services.