The Danish designer Per Mollerup made a welcome visit to Reading today to talk to MA students. He reminded them that wayshowing is what we need to do to support wayfinding. And he also demonstrated that pictograms confuse as well as enlighten in many cases. (For example, is ▼ male and ▲ female, or is it the other way around?)
Here is an example of his work at Copenhagen airport, replacing illegible white-on-yellow signs with clearer white and yellow type on a dark blue background.