Bilingual Wayfinding: Macrons, Colour Blindness, and Three Entrances
A student is designing a wayfinding system for a large co-educational school: 1,400 students, 12 buildings on a sloping site, and a new wharenui-style cultural centre. The brief requires bilingual signage in English and te reo Māori, with correct tohutō (macrons). The student's first proposal uses English-only building names, a sans-serif at 40 mm cap height, and colour-coding by faculty: blue, green, orange, red, purple. The deputy principal notes that some students are red-green colour blind, that visitors arrive at three entrances, and that the Māori names were checked by the kapa haka tutor but the macrons were dropped when the signs were exported to the signwriter's software. The student has a $4,000 budget for 25 signs and four weeks.
1. Identify the highest-priority changes to the proposal and justify each with reference to users and the brief.
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Priority order by risk:
- Restore the tohutō. Vowel length is phonemic in te reo Māori, so dropping macrons changes pronunciation and can change meaning. The names were already checked by the kapa haka tutor, so the error is a file-handling failure, not a translation issue. Fix: use a font containing macrons, convert type to outlines before export, and approve a printed proof.
- Bilingual parity. The brief requires English and te reo Māori; English-only names fail it. Both languages should appear with equal status, not Māori as a small subtitle.
- Colour-blind access. Red/green and blue/purple pairs are risky. Add redundant coding - large building numbers, icons, and strong light/dark value contrast - and test in greyscale.
- Decision points at all three entrances. Visitors arriving at the wrong entrance need orientation immediately.
- Legibility by distance. 40 mm cap height may suit 2–3 m but not 15 m; size the type to viewing distance.
At $4,000 for 25 signs (about $160 each), redundant numbering is cheaper than adding more colours.
2. How should the student test the system before production, given the budget and four-week timeline?
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Use low-cost, high-yield testing:
- Print full-size paper signs and tape them at the three entrances and at two corridor junctions.
- Ask 8–10 students, including some who do not know the school, to find a named building; time them and record wrong turns.
- View the signs at 5 m and 15 m to check cap height and contrast.
- Photograph each sign and run it through a colour-blind simulator, and print greyscale copies to confirm the numbering and icons still work.
- Check a printed proof for macrons before sending files.
This costs almost nothing and catches the highest-risk failures - missing macrons, illegible distances, and colour-only coding - before the signwriter begins.
3. What does the macron export failure reveal about the design process, and what should the student do about it?
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It shows that production file handling is part of design, not an administrative afterthought. The designer is responsible for choosing a typeface with the required glyphs, checking that they survive export, converting text to outlines, and signing off a physical proof.
The response should be procedural: add a pre-flight checklist (font glyph check, outlined type, colour specification, size, spelling and macrons checked by the tutor), and require a printed proof approved by the school before release. In the portfolio, present this as a technical constraint that was identified and solved, showing evidence of the corrected file and proof - not as an error to hide.