Porter Airlines Terminal Signage And Wayfinding, Toronto

Our brave sig­nage experts entered the game at a time when the giant build­ings stood emp­ty and unfin­ished inside, with­out a sin­gle sign to begin to imag­ine all kinds of signs lead­ing the way for busy passengers.

When it comes to signs and trav­el, if wayfind­ing signs are planned out cor­rect­ly we real­ly should­n’t even know the signs are there because look­ing for signs makes us feel lost and con­fused while well designed signs make us feel safe and at home wher­ev­er we are. 

The less con­scious atten­tion we pay to wayfind­ing signs we inter­act with, the more effec­tive the signs are because we remem­ber the bright enjoy­ment and expe­ri­ence the signs have allowed.

In 2006, Art­Signs designed and built the com­plete bilin­gual wayfind­ing sys­tem for Porter Air­lines — both the main­land fer­ry ter­mi­nal at the foot of Bathurst Street and the island ter­mi­nal at Toron­to City Cen­tre Air­port, now Bil­ly Bish­op Toron­to City Air­port. There was no exist­ing sys­tem and no tem­plate to copy. We start­ed from scratch.

The brief cov­ered the whole pas­sen­ger path. Pas­sen­gers arrive at the fer­ry ter­mi­nal on Eire­ann Quay, cross the West­ern Gap by fer­ry, and con­tin­ue into the island ter­mi­nal. In 2006 the fer­ry was the only way across — the pedes­tri­an tun­nel would not open until 2015. If the signs failed, the jour­ney failed with them.

We worked direct­ly with Michael Deluce — with Porter from the 2006 launch, and today the air­line’s Pres­i­dent and CEO — on the sign fam­i­lies, the mate­ri­als and fin­ish­es, and every deci­sion a first-time pas­sen­ger would need to make. Eng­lish and French through­out: depar­tures, arrivals, fer­ry, ele­va­tors, wash­rooms, exits.

The build­ings were up. The inte­ri­ors were not. Bare dry­wall, exposed columns, tape mea­sures, site notes. We mea­sured columns that weren’t fin­ished and spec­i­fied a full cus­tom sys­tem for rooms we had to imag­ine ahead of the fin­ish­ing trades.

Porter’s first flight left on Octo­ber 23, 2006. The wayfind­ing was com­plete and in place before the doors opened.

Two decades on, this remains the work we point to when a client asks whether we can design cus­tom air­port and tran­sit wayfind­ing sys­tems for ter­mi­nals across the USA and Cana­da. We can. We did it for an air­line that was launch­ing from a build­ing that was­n’t finished.

Keep an eye out for our more recent lob­by signs next time you Fly Porter. The check-in counter sig­nage and ele­va­tor graph­ics are ours too.