CREAMY
JAIN MODI.
SECTOR
NID Andhra Pradesh
Signage and wayfinding system designed for the National Institute of Design, Andhra Pradesh under the Earn While You Learn programme.
CLIENT
NID Andhra Pradesh
Wayfinding Design
Navigating a design campus should feel intuitive, welcoming, and aligned with the institution’s visual identity. We create a signage and wayfinding system for NID AP, focusing on clarity, consistency, and usability across the academic blocks, studios, workshops, and common areas.
The existing navigation relied on temporary markers and informal cues, which often caused confusion for new students, visiting faculty, and guests. We set out to create a system that blended seamlessly with the architectural style of the campus: calm, minimal, and grounded in cool off-white and grey tones.
We began by mapping the campus grounds and flow of movement. We conducted user interviews with students, faculty, housekeeping staff and visitors to identify pain points:
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Frequent confusion at intersections and workshop entrances
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Inconsistent signs and visual styles across different zones
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Lack of clarity for first-time visitors or people unfamiliar with the campus layout
We mapped all user groups on campus to understand their needs and movement patterns. This helped us identify how students, faculty, staff, workers, and visitors navigate the space differently, allowing us to design a system that works well for all of them.
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We also mapped the different ways users enter and approach the campus to understand their first points of contact and moments of hesitation. This helped us place signage where it would have the most impact and guide users smoothly from entry to destination.
To understand the different needs of people using the NID AP campus, we created user personas based on the groups identified in our analysis. These personas helped us capture their goals, challenges, and level of familiarity with the campus.
Mapping their behaviours and pain points helped us design a wayfinding system that works for everyone who enters the campus.
The system needed to support quick recognition, reduce decision fatigue, and work equally well for students, faculty, workers, and first-time visitors. At the same time, it had to blend naturally with the campus architecture, which prominently features cool off-white and grey tones.
We built the visual language around simplicity and readability. The typefaces were chosen for high legibility from a distance and from multiple angles. We paired this with a restrained colour palette inspired by the campus itself, using soft neutrals as the base and minimal accent colours for zone differentiation. This allowed the signs to remain informative without creating visual noise in a learning-heavy environment.
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After a lot of iterations, we moved forward with this design direction. The inner angular form of the board was inspired by the sharp geometric lines of the NID AP buildings, creating a visual link between the signage and the campus architecture. Our initial colour palette used dark green and beige, with beige framing the information and dark green serving as the base for the text, while the text itself was set in beige.
Later, during production, the colours were refined to brown and beige because the darker boards tended to fade quickly under the harsh Andhra sunlight. This updated palette improved visibility, durability, and consistency across the campus in all lighting conditions.
The system was applied across various sign categories, including directional boards, room identifiers, facility markers, and safety signs. Each sign followed a consistent structure in terms of layout, typography, and iconography, making it easy for users to recognise and understand information across the campus. This consistency helped create a smoother navigation experience, especially in high-movement areas like studio corridors and workshop zones.
MAJOR DIRECTIONAL BOARDS
SMALL DIRECTIONAL BOARDS
CEILING BOARD
ICON BOARDS
FIRE EXIT
DOOR
DOOR DIRECTORY
FLOOR DIRECTORY
FLOOR DIRECTORY
Through this project, we learned how to design a clear and practical wayfinding system from scratch. We understood how important it is to study user movement, test visibility in real spaces, and choose colours and materials that actually work on-site.
