Brisbane Underground
Centrally located in Brisbane, Australia, the Queen Street Mall is a pedestrian mall which extends approximately 500 metres from George Street to Edward Street. The Queen Street Mall is a dense urban retail precinct with arcades and thoroughfares feeding into surrounding streets, it currently receives 26 million visitors each year, and is home to over 700 retailers.
Located beneath the foot traffic of the mall is the Queen Street Bus Station. A series of below-ground bus platforms can be accessed by several entry points throughout the mall and arcades above.
The challenge was to strengthen the presence of these entry points amongst the visual clutter of a busy retail environment; while also developing a clear and consistent trail of information leading users to their end destinations.
Given the complexity of the site and its wide-variety of user groups, Dotdash employed a ground up approach. It included conducting user-experience surveys, and customer journey mapping, to better understand how people were accessing the bus station.
Findings revealed that a large majority of users referred to the surrounding retail landmarks to orientate themselves and were not aware of the existing entries to the bus station throughout the Mall itself. There was also no consistent visual language regarding the bus station, creating further confusion as to what signage to reference.
With this considered, Dotdash developed a wayfinding strategy which incorporated the surrounding retail landmarks into the naming of each entry point, ie. Myer Centre Bus Platforms. Whilst also numbering each platform in relation to existing TransLink Manuals, creating consistency across all journey planning material.
For heightened legibility, a hierarchy of information specific to each sign type was developed, considering sight lines, decision points, and viewing distances within the mall. The approach was to separate signage into two groups, for long and short distance viewing.
Long viewing signage was elevated for maximum viewing distance, allowing entry points to be clearly identified from all passages of travel within the mall. Short distance signage was located overhead, providing directional cues towards the Bus Station throughout major “shopping flow” areas.
The placement of signage throughout the wider city block, surrounding the Mall, allowed pedestrian traffic to be directed towards the Busway’s major entry points from a greater distance, while also creating a broader awareness of their locations.
To strengthen the TransLink brand, high contrast TransLink colours were incorporated into all sign types, creating consistency, and clearly announcing their whereabouts within the mall environment.
