If you can't beat them, join them

Context

What has happened?

Replacing Wayfinding signs aren't easy. Yea, I totally get it. Even the man himself has said it and I quote:

LTA and PTO are like a big elephant — you can't make an elephant run.

Look at it from a regular commuter's perspective, they may not notice a significant difference between the yellow patch icon with or without the gate. They serve their purpose as long as the signs direct them to the various exits.

Raffles Place adopted the "Way Out" sign with an icon instead of the one with the gate, differentiating between alphabetical and numerical exits. It was the first station on the existing MRT line that adopted the new wayfinding signs in 2022. Over time, we studied and noticed that there wasn't a significant difference between the icon and the gate and decided to standardise the gate design across all stations. We hope to replace the "Way Out" icon at Raffles Place's gate if time permits.

You may have noticed that we changed the "WAY OUT" text to bold after TEL3 because we found that the sign's visibility was unclear from a distance.

Achieving consistency and replacing all signage across the country overnight is very challenging. While we wish to do so, it requires time, manpower, and careful planning. Compared to metro systems overseas, some signages also differ slightly, such as those of Taipei Metro and MTR.

We are fortunate to continuously improve the wayfinding experience here in Singapore. Change is the only constant, and we embrace feedback and ideas to fine-tune our wayfinding signage for both existing and new stations.

Hope that the above enlightens you and I appreciate your attention to detail and interest in enhancing the station signage. Keep it going!

Paper Signages to the rescue!

I previously mentioned about Paper signages in my earlier blog post. On older networks, not many paper signages were put up, a stark contrast for TEL stations. When TEL4 stations launched, less than a week, new paper signages had popped up!

From observations, the paper signages served as an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions), as most information that was printed on the paper signage can be found on the Concourse. Probably because commuters kept asking the same questions, the Station Managers believed they might as well put up a paper signage to address these.

Personally, I have no issues with paper signages. The more infos the better right? However, most of them are designed by an average folk, hence design languages can be thrown out of the picture. Now that's what I plan to tackle in this blog post. Psst.. Station PSCs, if you want me to design your paper sign, hit me up!

What if, I redesigned every paper signages in TEL stations? I promise, no more yapping, I'm just gonna present my works. Do take note, these concepts are meant to look temporary. I can design it more professionally but that is for the actual signage. I'm focusing merely on temporary paper signage. This is a developing post. Do check back often because I might upload more new works in the coming weeks.