WayfindingSystem

Connaught Place · New Delhi Aug 2025

Twelve identical colonnade blocks arranged in a circle. Nothing on them tells you which one you're standing in front of.

So the system starts there: one grid, two typefaces, an arrow drawn out of the typeface itself, and a board that says two things instead of fourteen. Then it gets tested against the people who actually get lost — and against the RPWD Act, which has opinions about all of it.

RoleSignage & wayfinding

TypeHelvetica Neue · Mukta

SiteInner Circle, 12 blocks

StandardRPWD Act, 2016

Wayfinding Environmental graphics Type system Icon design Accessibility

Mentor Dr. Arati Prakash Khare · Built 14 signs · 1 directory board · 1 kiosk · 1 printed guide

Scroll to enter the circle

Frame 01 — block plate, 1:1

Block Aब्लॉक ए

Twelve plates. A to N. No I, no J.

The Block A plate installed under the CP colonnade

Naming

blocks run A to N. there is no I and no J. nobody I asked could tell me why.

so: twelve.

02 — The place

Every block looks like the last one.

Drag the ring. Hover a block. Notice how little changes.

Simplified plan — not to scale drag me →

Sign scheduleBlock A

Block Aब्लॉक ए

Circle—

Frontage—

the whole project is one question: which of these am I standing in front of?

The kit is identical for all twelve. Only Block A was drawn out — which is exactly why the other eleven still look like each other.

03 — The problem

One post. Keep scrolling. Watch it fill up.

Nothing here is invented. Signboards disagree on font, size and colour. Some are behind poles, wires and shop boards. Others have weathered until they can't be read at dusk. Languages switch without warning and directional cues contradict each other.

1 Messages competing on this post

Each thing that lands gets named on the right as it arrives. None of them is vandalism. Each one was installed by somebody with a reason, and the sum of the reasons is a post nobody can read.

every single one of these was somebody's reasonable idea.

Stage 0 — as designed

The Block A plate, English and Devanagari on one line

BLOCK-A(1-24) SHOPS · GATE NO.4 THIS SIDE → · NO PARKING · DELIVERY 6–9AM ONLY · SEE OFFICE · ब्लॉक ए · TOWING ZONE · NO HAWKING · CCTV IN USE · KEEP LEFT

to let — 2nd floor — call anytime

MEGA SALE 70% OFF

PG FOR
GIRLS
9876543210

TUITION · CLASS 6–12
MATHS · SCIENCE · ENGLISH

किराये पर
देना है

two messages. the other twelve went somewhere they belong.

the pole it is bolted to an overhead cable municipal notices, nine of them a private to-let card advertising

The CP colonnade corridor with a small block sign lost against the columns — Sign vs. colonnade

A small circular block marker mounted high on an arch — Block marker, above eye level

Posters stapled to a tree beside parked cars — Competing for the same wall

Complex layout

Connaught Place's circular design and identical blocks make orientation difficult for first-time visitors.

Lack of wayfinding

Few directional signs and poor visibility cause confusion while navigating between blocks, metro exits, and parking.

Accessibility issues

Inadequate provisions for visually impaired and mobility-challenged users; absence of tactile paths, ramps, and audio aids.

Visual clutter

Excess advertisements and unorganized boards compete with signage, reducing clarity and making navigation stressful.

So I redesigned the system.

starting with the only thing everybody actually reads: the letter.

04 — Who gets lost

Two people. Same circle. Different kind of lost.

Neha Awasthi

24 yr · Noida · occasional visitor

About

Motivations

Pain points

Route trace — first visit

— — —

Traced on the real plan — inner circle, outer circle, one park in the middle.

both of them end up asking a stranger. one of them has been here forty times.

Target audience 01

First-time visitors

Foreign travellers and people unfamiliar with CP's circular layout.

Target audience 02

Shoppers

People exploring the markets, restaurants and retail stores in CP.

Target audience 03

Daily commuters

Office workers, metro users and people passing through CP regularly.

Target audience 04

Elderly & differently-abled

Senior citizens, wheelchair users and people with vision or mobility challenges. This group set the heights.

05 — Ideation

Before any of it, there was a page of bad figures.

The pictogram came last. What came first was arguing about what a person is.

Every direction below was drawn before a single sign existed. Three of them were wrong in a useful way — they are the reason the fourth is the one on the street.

Sketchbook page exploring figure pictograms and their containers — Sketchbook — figures, containers, and the argument about proportion

01Photographic icons

Dropped. A photograph of a washroom door is a photograph of one washroom door. It stops being true the moment the door is repainted.

02Text-only plates

Dropped. Two languages already fill the panel. A third message in words leaves nothing for the person who reads neither.

03Outlined figures in squares

Dropped. The square container fought the arch behind it, and thin outlines vanished at 20 m in the first blur test.

04Solid figure inside a circle

Kept. The circle sits calmly against the colonnade, the solid figure survives dirt and distance, and the same construction takes all fourteen signs without redrawing anything.

the ones that got thrown away are the ones that did the work.

06 — The type system

Two typefaces, chosen by squinting at them.

Helvetica NeueLight / Regular / Bold

Female WashroomAa

Clean, modern, and highly legible. The bold weights stay readable from a distance while keeping the design refined and professional.

MuktaLight / Regular / Bold

महिला शौचालयआ

Clean, simple and highly readable, especially in Indian contexts. Its open letterforms hold up from a distance and stay clear at any size or environment.

Female Washroom

महिला शौचालय

25 m 1 m

18 M still readable

the weights weren't picked on screen. they were picked by blurring the sheet until one of them broke first.

07 — The bit I'm proud of

The arrow was already inside the typeface.

T, J and Z have sharp terminals. That angle became the arrowhead — so the arrows never look bolted on.

Helvetica Neue, set in the signage blue. Look at where the strokes end.

T, J and Z with their sharp terminals circled — The original derivation sheet

Four outlined arrows: straight, back, left and right — The family — straight · back · left · right

Hand sketches exploring figure pictograms and their containers — Before any of it — the sketchbook

08 — Building the system

Every icon is the same 24 px argument.

Turn the layers on. The grid, the construction circle and the sign dimensions are all still in there.

W 480 · H 720 · stroke 2

Typography→ Grid→ Icons→ Arrows→ Signage

Pictograms drawn on a blueprint grid with 24 px and 16×20 px callouts — Grid structure — 24 px, 2 px stroke

No Smoking sign with 48 by 72 cm dimensions and 8 cm text bands — Configuration — 48 × 72 cm

Design breakdown

the figure keeps a convex curve and one slightly sharp edge — same edge the arrow came from.

consistency isn't a mood board.

Anatomy of the pictogram: stylised shape, convex curve, slightly sharp edge, positive space as legs

09 — The signage system

Fourteen signs. One construction.

Every sign is the same square figure field over the same caption block, so a new sign is a new pictogram and nothing else. Colour carries the grammar: navy states a fact, red forbids. Click any sign to see its construction.

figure-centric, because a figure survives a dirty board better than a word does — and CP boards get dirty in one monsoon.

10 — The Block A board

One board. Four jobs. No fourteenth message.

Click to enlarge

The redesigned Block A signage board: letter A, an organised shop list with Braille, and a simplified block map

This is the redesigned signage board for Connaught Place, A-Block, created to offer clearer navigation and a more inclusive user experience. It displays an organised list of shops and categories, so visitors can quickly locate fashion stores, restaurants and essential services within the block. A simplified block map at the bottom shows their exact position and explains the circular layout of CP. Braille is included so visually impaired visitors can navigate independently.

Block letter

The A is the largest thing on the board on purpose. It's the one piece of information that never changes when the shops do — and the landing-page version of this board went from fourteen messages to two.

Discarded

first version alphabetised the shops. useless — nobody arrives knowing the name, they arrive knowing "somewhere that sells shoes".

grouped by category instead.

11 — Accessibility, first draft not last

The board has to work for the person who can't see it.

Toggle the layers. The board changes. That's the point — none of these are skins.

One thing the Act is often read as demanding: a black-and-white version. It doesn't. It asks for contrast, and the blue already has it — so the contrast layer measures the palette instead of replacing it. Nine requirements, measured rather than asserted.

Sizing is not a taste question. Set a block, then walk away from it.

The plate is scaled here to how it would actually appear at that distance. The point where it stops working is the point where the directory board has to exist.

Frame 10 — block plate, 1:1

Block Aब्लॉक ए

Viewed from 12 m

Block A

Viewing distance 12 m

3 m22 m36 m60 m

Panel900 × 260 mm

Cap height180 mm

Comfortable readto 22 m

Absolute limit36 m

At this distanceReads

Comfortably legible. This is the range the plate is designed for — the width of the carriageway plus the depth of the colonnade.

Sizing basis — 25 mm of cap height per 3 m of read distance

12 — Access, measured

No high-contrast variant, because the system is already the high-contrast variant.

The obvious move is to draw a second black-and-white set for low vision. I measured the navy first. It clears AAA on white by a wide margin in both directions, so a second set would only be a second thing to maintain, a second thing to install wrongly, and a second thing for a visitor to learn.

Block A · ब्लॉक ए

#123FA8 on #FFFFFF, both polarities

Pure black on white would measure 21:1. It would also read as a hazard or a legal notice in Indian street context, and it throws away the one colour that already identifies civic wayfinding here.

Measured contrast ratio 9.12:1

WCAG 2.1 · passes AA and AAA for normal text

Relative luminance0.065 vs 1.000

Sets maintainedOne

Touch

Braille on the same line as print

Wenger’s⠺⠑⠝⠛⠑⠗⠞

Grade 1, at 1200–1400 mm. Separate braille panels put blind readers in a different part of the board from everyone else.

Touch

Raised block letter at the colonnade head

A1.2 mm relief
sans serif
no outline

Found by hand at the same place on every block, so the location itself becomes the instruction.

Type

Large type is a kiosk mode, not a second board

Wenger’s · Confectionery Wenger’s

A printed board can only be one size. The screen can be both, so the enlargement lives where enlargement is possible.

Height

One mounting band for everything interactive

1220 mm — forward reach limit

Nothing that has to be touched sits above the line. This is what Reach Mode enforces on the kiosk below.

13 — The kiosk

It's running. Press the buttons.

Reach Mode and Magnifier Mode aren't screenshots here — they actually change the interface.

AQI: 453
Hazardous 12:06:25 PM 12 NOV

Accessibility

Select one or both of the below options

Standard — content sits where a standing adult reads it

Why the hardware row

a touchscreen alone fails the person who can't reach it. so the kiosk keeps physical arrows, back, select and hide.

the buttons above work too.

14 — On site

It only counts at 6 feet, in July, from across the road.

This is the whole system standing in one place: five sign types, one kiosk, one directory board, and the person every height was set from. Click anything in the drawing.

Elevation of the colonnade with signs at 7.5, 6.5, 6.0 and 5.5 feet and 20 and 30 degree sightlines — Elevation — Block A colonnade, outer circle. Heights set from the seated eyeline.

the wheelchair user in this drawing is not decoration — the heights were set from her eyeline, not mine.

Information and wayfinding kiosk in a park setting — Kiosk — on site

Block A plate hanging between colonnade columns — Block plate — colonnade

No Smoking sign on a pole on the street — No Smoking — street

Kiosk showing the pinned map in 3D view — Kiosk — pinned map

Brochure front: DOs and DON'Ts, cover, and CP's timeline — Brochure — front

Brochure back: about, 1-day walkthrough, secret spots and the illustrated CP map — Brochure — back, the illustrated map

Printed CP city-guide brochure, folded open — Brochure — printed

15 — Recognition

It got funded.

Selected under Chhatra Pariyojana Vittiya Sahayata — a government student-project financial assistance scheme — in the 2025–26 cycle, in both categories it was entered for.

Chhatra Pariyojana Vittiya Sahayata · 2025–26

CPVS2025–26

छात्र परियोजना वित्तीय सहायता

STPcategory FTPcategory

SchemeChhatra Pariyojana Vittiya Sahayata (CPVS)

Cycle2025–26

Categories selected inSTP and FTP

ProjectWayfinding system, Connaught Place

StatusSelected for funding

This recognition means a lot, and it keeps me designing with purpose.