This issue of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Signage and Wayfinding underscores the significance of involving end users, including the public, in the design and policy development of signage systems. The issue explores the multifaceted roles of signs and symbols in reflecting community character, supporting business branding, aiding wayfinding, and enhancing placemaking. Emphasizing evidence-based design and research, the articles present diverse methodologies, including stakeholder theory, qualitative studies, and shadowing techniques, to inform signage practices.

This issue explores themes of placemaking and mobility. Beginning with the iconic signs of the highway Route 66, the first article weaves together geography, cultural history, philosophy, and American heritage in the exploration of the Garcia neon sign collection. The article also includes an interview with the collector Carlos Garcia about the preservation of the signs and how they have shaped our understanding of the American landscape. Continuing the theme of mobility, the second article investigates digital signage with non-traditional and clever wording, which attempts to improve driver safety. This study tests the effectiveness of creative messages on driver behavior across diverse demographics. The issue concludes with an interview with Silas Munro, author of Strikethough! Typographic Messages of Protest where Silas discusses how protest signs can activate spaces with social meaning for diverse groups of people.

This issue of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Signage and Wayfinding highlights the importance of respecting diversity in signage. As our world becomes ever more connected, signage can influence groups previously not engaged in a location. Such people may speak a different language, have different values, or simply may be visiting for the first time. Our collective knowledge in signage research allows us to be flexible and adaptable, meeting the needs of diverse audiences in diverse places.

Well-designed signage and wayfinding systems are essential components of contemporary life. They can save time as well as reduce the stress (and potential for accidents when driving) associated with navigating through unfamiliar environments to new destinations. This issue of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Signage and Wayfinding provides findings from emerging research informing the design and use of technology and traditional signage for enhanced wayfinding in a diverse array of complex visual environments. Some of the results reported here will likely have important implications for the design and use of wayfinding systems in interior, as well as outdoors environments. 

This issue of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Signage and Wayfinding begins the second half of our first decade of publication as the only academic journal dedicated exclusively to signage and wayfinding research. Since Volume 1, Number 1 of IJSW was posted in December 2016 much has happened in the world, with significant advances in signage and wayfinding digital technology, and signage research methodologies, specifically (e.g. wearable eye-tracking hardware). And of course, the unforeseen and devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have led to multiple low- and high-tech innovations in visual communications that have raised numerous and interesting research questions. This issue of IJSW celebrates our sixth year by “Looking Back, Looking Forward and Recognizing the Importance of Signage Research".

This issue of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Signage and Wayfinding presents a range of scholarly work reflecting IJSW’s disciplinary breadth and the different approaches of scholars to both signage and wayfinding research. The title of this issue, “Wayfinding, Public Art, Contextualization, and Communicating Neighborhood Identities,” conveys a number of important but seemingly disparate research topics that on closer inspection show a surprising degree of overlap.

Co-Editors: Christopher Auffrey, PhD and Vikas Mehta, PhD

Managing Editor: Kyle Katz, MCP '22 

This issue of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Signage and Wayfinding presents a range of work truly reflecting both this journal’s interdisciplinarity and its attention to both signage and wayfinding research. The title of this issue, Signage Perceptions, Experiences, and Aesthetic Judgements, reflects the range of scholarship included, but also highlights the complex nature of the multiple factors influencing the effectiveness of signage as an essential means of visual communication. As the articles in this issue demonstrate, the interrelated factors of regulation, design, and display context, taken together, will impact viewer perceptions and judgments about the messages on signs, and may lead to different viewer behavior entirely apart from the actual text used. Ultimately, the matters explored in this issue have important implications for commerce and wayfinding, as would be expected of explorations of signage effectiveness, but also connect with the range of related quality of life issues which underscore the importance of signage and wayfinding research in a broader societal context. 

Co-Editors: Christopher Auffrey, PhD and Vikas Mehta, PhD
Managing Editor: Anna Parnigoni, MCP '21

Our newest issue of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Signage and Wayfinding focuses on communication effectiveness at the intersection of consumers’ perception and their experience. This special issue features work from marketing and communication scholars who explore the visual characteristics of signage as they influence evaluations, purchase intentions, detection of omission, and compliance. Given the timing of this issue, it is not surprising that the COVID-19 pandemic provided a highly relevant context in which to study consumers’ perception of visual information. As such, two of the articles presented discuss signage within the context of the global pandemic specifically. Other articles present important research on topics related to sign complexity and consumer perceptiveness.

Our guest co-editors for this issue are Dr. Aparna Sundar and Dr. Hélène Deval and our Managing Editor is Anna Parnigoni. 

This issue of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Signage and Wayfinding provides a broad overview of the true interdisciplinary nature and breadth of the multiple and inter-related fields of inquiry involved in signage research. The articles in this issue also showcase the diverse research methods currently being used to explore some of the important questions related to efficiency, effectiveness, and aesthetics whose answers can serve to inform improved practice and policymaking related to signage and wayfinding specifically, and to visual communication more generally. What emerges from this seemingly eclectic collection of research is a surprising degree of overlap, pointing to the importance of a journal such as IJSW for informing specific areas of research related to signage and wayfinding, but also assisting researchers to access those findings emerging in allied fields.

Co-Editors: Christopher Auffrey, PhD and Vikas Mehta, PhD
Managing Editor: Anna Parnigoni, MCP '21

Scholars often write about the legibility of signs based on the characteristics of the sign and its surrounds. However, what is most fundamental in this equation is the sign users, those who see the sign, interpret its meaning, and utilize it as a wayfinding or decision-making aid. In this issue of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Signage and Wayfinding, featured authors seek to understand the role of user interpretation in the legibility
equation.

Signs are and continue to be important navigational tools that help
passersby orient themselves to urban landscapes. These devices become
part of these urban environments and are utilized by a wide variety of
pedestrians and motorists. Those who erect these signs do so with the
hope that their messages will be seen and understood by all who view
them. The same is true for those who generate public art displays, which
are typically regulated in similar fashion to signs. Localities are committed
to regulating signs to ensure that they do not cause safety issues or create
aesthetic blight. Crafting regulations that weigh the need to be viewed with
issues of public safety is a fine balancing act. The authors contained in this
issue of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Signage and Wayfinding seek to
share the importance of context and cognition as a basis for establishing
regulations that may affect the visibility of both signs and public art.

This special issue of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Signage and Wayfinding is based on the theme of a recent University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art exhibition and symposium entitled "What's Your Sign?" Hosted by the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa and on view from August 26 through November 26, 2017, the exhibition mined the permanent collections for art works related to the evolution of signage and explored how have symbols of selling shifted over centuries and cultures. Additionally, the exhibition and symposium questioned the ways retail signs reflect or reject broader visual cultures and technological advancements. The articles included in this special issue (some of which debuted in the symposium) examine the iconography, typography, and materiality of retail signs and spaces as well as the cultural, financial, and geo-political forces that shaped storefronts and retail spaces in the past.

Signage has the potential to serve a critical role in human settlements for facilitating free speech, creating a sense of place, engaging public participation in decision-making, and promoting wayfinding and economic development. Virtually every US city has sign regulations of some type, yet many are seemingly the result of simplistic replications of the codes of other nearby jurisdictions based on little more than inclinations and convention, and uninformed by a growing body of signage science. This issue brings together timely signage research on key topics of interest to a wide range of stakeholders concerned about the relationships of signage with free speech, sense of place, public participation and economic development.

The second issue of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Signage and Wayfinding is dedicated to the topic of visibility. As simply put by the Texas Transportation Institute:

Seeing the road and everything around it while driving is not a preferred option, rather it is an essential component of safe driving. Driving is a visual activity, and as we make our way down a road, we all look at a wide range of visual inputs—the roadway, the surrounding terrain, other vehicles, roadside buildings and advertisements and traffic control devices such as signs, markings, and signals—to help us get where we are going. How we distinguish those visual inputs and maneuver the vehicle safely varies from person to person and can depend on quite a number of random, uncontrollable things—the weather, time of day, driver age, health and experience, as well as unexpected distractions inside or outside the vehicle—all can have an effect.

As businesses know, their businesses must be visible to be viable. Clear signage enhances their visibility in the marketplace.

In this Inaugural Issue of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Signage and Wayfinding, authors and researchers across disciplines come together to discuss the importance of effective signage and wayfinding in design, marketing, and transportation.