‘Everyone that uses the campus – the RUG, the Hanze University of Applied Sciences and other businesses – has their own signage. It’s pretty much a maze’, says campus management staffer Annet de Vree. ‘It’s just unclear for students, visitors, staff and vendors.’ It is high time to tackle the confusion.

Wayfinding

The campus management, which is responsible for maintenance of the Zernike campus, joined forces with the two academic institutions and the businesses on site to develop a new signage strategy. Design bureau Mijksenaar, which specialises in so-called wayfinding, helped to create the plans. The same bureau is responsible for the millions of passengers at Schiphol finding their way around the Amsterdam airport.

‘We decided on a very simple strategy’, says De Vree. ‘The new signs will only list the address and the building name, if the building has a name’, such as the Duisenberg building and the Bernoulliborg. Building numbers and letters will no longer be included. ‘Business names will not be listed, either’, De Vree adds. ‘That would just make the new signs equally unintelligible.’

Signs

In addition to the signs for the individual buildings, larger signs will also be placed at strategic spots on the Zernike Campus feature large maps with the street names, address numbers and buildings names. ‘Mijksenaar choose the spots where they should go so as to ensure that every campus visitor can figure out where to go.’ The maps will also be added to the website of the campus.

A characteristic of the new signs will be the blue and black colours from the logo of the Zernike campus. But there will be no distinction made in the colour schemes for the academic institutions. That is intentional, De Vree says. ‘The goal is to create unity on the campus.’ And that is something that everyone agrees on: ‘Every section wants a clearly demarcated campus.’

The new signs should be in place before the new semester begins in September.