Legible at three in the morning, in a field

The problem

Cadence had a good poster and no signage. Every year, the crew improvised direction panels with spray paint on the Thursday, in a field where the four stages are not visible from each other and nothing is at a right angle. By Saturday night, the information tent was answering the same question every ninety seconds.

The constraint that decides everything: whoever installs the signs is a volunteer who arrives on Wednesday, has never seen the plan, and will not read a manual.

What we did

One panel, one size, one fixing method, in three colours that mean three things: yellow for stages, green for services, red for exits and first aid. A volunteer holding a yellow panel knows it goes on a stage route without knowing anything else.

The typography is set to be read at fifteen metres by tired people, which in practice means one weight, very few words per panel, and no arrows pointing diagonally. Panels are printed on both faces with different destinations, so one object serves two directions and the install crew cannot hang it the wrong way round.

The identity came out of the same decision. The wave in the mark is the site plan of the field, redrawn: the same four curves appear on the poster, on the lanyards and on the ground.

What it changed

The site went up in two days instead of four. Questions at the information tent dropped by around forty five per cent against the previous edition, counted the same way, with a tally sheet.

The panels are aluminium composite with replaceable faces, priced to be reused for four editions. The second year has already been printed.