Papers of “Wayfinder” Jane Davis Doggett ’56 MFA available at Haas Family Arts Library

The papers of graphic designer and artist Jane Davis Doggett ’56 MFA, who pioneered the wayfinding systems found today in airports and public spaces worldwide, are now open to researchers.

 “Whether you know it or not, you have walked through a place that Jane Davis Doggett designed,” said Adrienne Pruitt, archivist of special collections at the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library. 

For more than 50 years, beginning in 1959, Doggett designed award-winning wayfinding systems for more than 40 international airports and other large urban spaces, including museums, hospitals, transit systems, and event centers.

Doggett replaced the cluttered, confusing signage prevalent in the 1950s with a coded design for easy navigation and legibility. Doggett—influenced by her studies with Josef Albers, Paul Rand, and others—introduced “placemarks,” simple symbols to indicate the functional, cultural, or geographic character of a venue or area. She also coded signage and interior spaces with consistent typography and color schemes to link them visually and logically.

“I didn’t envision my role as herding people,” Doggett told “Yale Alumni News” in 2021, “rather, I saw it as communicating to people the choices offered for their individual selections with clearly defined routings of how to get there.”

Later in her career, Doggett focused on her own artwork, creating paintings, sculptures, and tapestries. Her work was widely exhibited, including at the Yale University Art Gallery.

Her groundbreaking book “Talking Graphics” contains her IconoChrome series, an experiment in visual language that translates proverbs and philosophy into colorful geometric shapes.

The Jane Davis Doggett papers is the library’s first collection from a female graduate of Yale’s Graphic Design program, established in 1951.

The archive, which includes reference materials from 1917, spans to 2023. It includes Doggett’s graphic design work, artwork, papers, correspondence, artifacts, and audiovisual and born-digital materials.

View the documentary “Jane Davis Doggett: Wayfinder in the Jet Age” on PBS online.

Photos within slide show: Installation of “23rd Psalm,” Tennessee State Museum, 2009; roadway into Tampa International Airport, ca. 1971; Jane Doggett with puppies, photo by Ginny Bales

Photos within text: Interior of Tampa International Airport, ca. 1971; Jane Doggett in her studio, New Canaan, Connecticut, 1971

—Deborah Cannarella