You are here is a lie: How wayfinding changes places

You are here’ might be the most quietly radical phrase in design. It doesn’t just orientate you. It tells you what reality is, where you stand in it, and how you’re allowed to move.

Wayfinding Design Director Alison Richings reframes navigation as a form of invisible architecture. This is a manifesto for changing your attitude to wayfinding, seeing it as more than signage, as narrative, as power and as civic design.

She argues that navigation legibility doesn’t describe places. It produces them. Destination names are an act of territorial fiction. Arrows are political decisions. And every map is a subtle script about who belongs and who doesn’t.

She aims to change your perception of wayfinding and signage, and you’ll never look at it in the same way again.