Some of the Capital's most visited areas, including Covent Garden, the South Bank and Richmond and Twickenham, will become easier to explore on foot from this month due to the expansion of Legible London.

The scheme was launched in November 2007 with a prototype of 19 signs in the West End of London. These signs have been used by an estimated 3.8m people since being installed. Studies have shown that journey times in the area are reduced by 16%, and that 90% of people think the system should be rolled out across the capital.

The 19-sign prototype has been extended to 75 signs around Mayfair, and in addition, three other parts of the Capital are now getting their own signs, maps and fingerposts to make it quicker and easier to navigate around each location on foot. The maps will also be displayed in Tube stations and bus stops in the pilot areas, to give people consistent information throughout their journey. Legible London is part of work to reduce the overall amount of street clutter. Its installation will allow the removal of obsolete signage that currently stands in many areas, making life easier for pedestrians.

Applied Information Group came up with the original concept for Legible London, developed the prototype and has evolved the system further with these pilots.

AIG Creative Director, Tim Fendley, has contributed to a special 'Traffic & Transport' issue of the Information Design Journal (IDJ), Special Issue: Traffic & Transport 2009, Volume 17, No. 2. The IDJ is a peer reviewed international journal that bridges the gap between research and practice in information design.

The article reviews the principles behind, and development of, a coordinated wayfinding system for walking in London and the outcomes following its prototype in the West End. Wayfinding in cities is fundamentally an issue of urban design and architecture, but for Legible London, the use of information design to respond to people's needs was at the fore. Where urban design is concerned with the space between buildings, information design is concerned with the space between the ears.

DBA's the Edge, a two day event that mixes a rising generation of creative talent with the most senior and successful of its high-achievers takes place at RIBA and the Circus Space in London from 9 to 10 December 2009. AIG's Creative Director Malcolm Garrett participates in the group events including a panel discussion on "How should designers argue for creativity and risk-taking in a recession" on Thursday 10 December at the Circus Space. Participants at the Edge include Erik Spiekermann, Michael C Place and Michael Wolff among others.

The collaboration between AIG’s Malcolm Garrett and Michael Clark, which started in the 80s and has been rekindled over the past four years of Michael's residency at The Barbican, took a step forward this year, moving beyond the design of programmes and promotional items. For the Michael Clark Company’s recent season at the Barbican in October, Malcolm’s graphics also made an on-stage appearance, integrated into the Company’s iconoclastic dance works.

The performance featured choreography to music by rock's 'Holy Trinity', David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed. The show now moves to Berlin in December before touring throughout 2010.

In three years all tyres on sale in Europe will be classified and labelled for fuel efficiency, wet grip and external rolling noise performance. The European Parliament formally adopted a labelling system on 25 November, with information design and pictograms by AIG and project management by Mostra.

Tyres with lower rolling resistance mean less fuel consumption. While there is already legislation for new cars to be fitted with low rolling resistance tyres, the aim is to ensure that consumers of replacement tyres can make more informed decisions, helping to stimulate innovation in the tyre market.

All tyres produced after 1 November 2012, including those for passenger cars, light and heavy duty vehicles, must either have a sticker or be accompanied by a printed label when distributed from the factory.

AIG were delighted to collaborate with Mulberry recently to entertain celebrity guests including James Corden, Matthew Horne, Charlotte Riley, James Brown and Jasmine Guiness at the launch of their new collection of laptop & phone accessories, designed by Mulberry for Apple products.

At the launch party, held on Guy Fawkes night at the Mulberry flagship Bond Street store, guests joined Mulberry creative director, Emma Hill to celebrate by leaving messages on Video Guestbooks on Apple laptops throughout the store.

The Video Guestbook software was developed by AIG in collaboration with Fabrica. A bespoke version was created for the Mulberry/Apple event. It will be playing on Apple laptops in the Bond Street Mulberry store until Christmas. If you can't make it to the store a collection of messages are playing on Mulberry's site – follow the link below. Have fun.

SkillSwap Goes Wayfinding on 18 November when AIG MD Kasper de Graaf speaks at the Lighthouse in Brighton. Kasper will tell the story of Legible London, the capital’s new pedestrian wayfinding system, from the original idea through to delivery of the pilot schemes now taking place in central London and Richmond. He will also compare this experience with that in other cities where AIG has developed wayfinding schemes, including Brighton, and talk about where city wayfinding is heading. Kasper appears alongside Patricia Brown, former CEO of the Central London Partnership, and ClearLeft’s user experience designer Cennydd Bowles. The event is organised by ClearLeft, who also organised this year’s dConstruct.

Sign09, a nine day event including exhibitions and seminars co-organised by the Sign Design Society and the International Institute for Information Design IIID will take place from 3rd to 11th of December 2009 in Vienna, Austria. At this joint Austro-British design event, AIG's Tim Fendley will speak on 4th of December reviewing his principles behind, and the developments of, the recent information systems carried out in cities such as Bristol, Brighton and London. The talk is entitled "A Principled Approach to Designing Urban Wayfinding".

Brighton & Hove’s first 20 new street signs, designed by Applied Information Group with Lacock Gullam, have been installed in the city centre. The pedestrian-centric wayfinding system, which includes print and interactive digital maps, is intended to reduce dependence on the car and public transport. Mapping and signage in car parks, at bus stops and inside Brighton train station will be added early next year, when the current city centre map will be replaced.

Check out photos and reports on the i-Design website.

i-Design 09 is the digital interactive conference at the London Design Festival. The day-long event is being held at the Old Cinema at the University of Westminster on Regent Street on Thursday 24 September.

The day features numerous presentations, debates and showcases, and will include film screenings from Onedotzero and Future of Sound, an exhibition of interactive work from Cybersonica artists, and a free Portfolio Clinic for emerging designers. A panel session convened by the 5D Conference team will discuss the future of immersive design.

AIG and i-Design creative director, Malcolm Garrett, is amongst the acclaimed speakers, who also include Nic Roope, Adrian Shaughnessy, Desiree Collier, Andrew Chitty, Bill Thompson, David Taylor, Tali Krakowsky, Martyn Ware, Andrew Shoben.

i-Design is an essential event for anyone with an interest or passion for interactive design and the digital arts..

Interacting with stakeholders and the public: the way public sector organisations do business has been revolutionised by advances in technology and media in recent years. AIG has organised this free seminar for clients and contacts in the public sector to see a broader perspective on these issues, presented by AIG's award-winning European partner firm Edenspiekermann, based in Amsterdam and Berlin. This seminar offers the opportunity to see best practice in other European countries for national and local government and transport networks. And it is a rare opportunity to meet some leading international designers in the field, with Edo van Dijk (pictured) talking about the new identity of Amsterdam and Erik Spiekermann on the public face of transport in Germany.

The seminar, "Government for the People", is to be held at RIBA, in London, on 25 September. 

The University of Southampton is hosting the 45th Annual Summer School, the 2009 conference of the Society of Cartographers. This event is a meeting place for all those interested in any aspect of mapping. The conference will feature a mix of well-established keynotes, lectures, workshops, and debates. As part of the 2D or 3D Mapping Session at this year’s conference Tim Fendley will be presenting Legible London.

Anyone who travels up or down the M1 knows Newport Pagnell. Less familiar than the eponymous service station is the fact that the town plays host to this year’s British Cartographic Society Symposium and Awards. AIG found their way there with ease to pick up the prestigious ‘OS MasterMap Award for Better Mapping’ for Legible London.

According to Rachel Abrams’s finely tuned design barometer, AIG’s pedestrian wayfinding system for the Capital is pretty hot – one of five city innovations she says are impacting on urban living for the better. In DCM she puts Legible London up there with green clubbing in Europe, commuter hitch-hiking in San Francisco and real-time bus and tram maps in Helsinki – a kind of Marauders Map for Finland’s capital.

This year's i-Design conference, at the London Design Festival, is to take place on 24 September 2009. It moves to a new venue at the University of Westminster. Malcolm Garrett of AIG and dynamo london, is Creative Director of the event, which is organised in partnership with Ian Delaney of New Media Knowledge. Tara Solesbury has been invited back as Event Producer for a second year. This is the third time i-Design will take place, and continues to grow year on year, with more partners, and partner events, to be announced in coming weeks.

The conference will focus this year on the increasing influence of interactive and immersive design plays in everyday life.

Tim Fendley is one of the guest speakers at the British Cartographic Society Annual Symposium: Mapping at Work which takes place in Newport Pagnell from 17–20 June. His talk, Legible London: A Wayfinding System for London, will be delivered on 19 June. It will provide background to the research and methodologies behind the initial concept, the formulation of the idea and the creation of the prototype solution.

The Legible London concept was proposed in 2004 to tackle the problems faced by many travellers throughout the capital. In 2007 a prototype multi-modal wayfinding system was commissioned, implemented in November and evaluated this February. The main premise is that if users are presented with accurate, timely and reliable wayfinding information then this will promote walking as a viable transport alternative for some journeys that are currently served by other transport modes. Research has shown that many journeys currently made by Underground could be made quicker by walking and also deliver additional benefits i.e. personal health and stimulation of local economy. An understanding of mapping designed for walkers is at the heart of the idea, along with an array of central data resources to connect information and providers together.

AIG’s website for artist/illustrator/wordsmith Paul Davis was named an Official Honoree in the Self-Promotion/Portfolio category of the 13th Annual Webby Awards. This year the awards attracted nearly 10,000 entries from over 50 US states and 60 countries. Just fifteen percent received Official Honoree status.

The website by AIG creative director Malcolm Garrett, designer Francesca Granato and programmer Luke Mitchell, was awarded the honour by the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences, a global organisation whose members include David Bowie, Harvey Weinstein, Matt Groening, Jamie Oliver and Internet co-inventor Vinton Cerf, amongst others. The official awards night is 8 June 2009.

The accolade is dual testimony to the absorbing, seemingly-random nature of the site and the technical innovation that drives it; in turn this is an apt reflection of Paul Davis’ work with naive drawings that are in fact probing, often profound, observations of the human condition.

Malcolm Garrett likens the site architecture to “the tentacles of a sea anemone” which float on the pages and can be swept about by the cursor. The occasional sound of rushing waves reinforces this impression.

The 2009 Include Conference is the fifth international conference on inclusive design. It will take place at the Royal College of Art, London UK from 5 to 8 April 2009. Include 2009 builds on the previous four conferences by exploring how inclusive design practice in design, research and business can lead towards innovation in people-centred design.

Tim Fendley will be hosting a workshop on mental mapping for delegates on the first day of the conference. The programme for Include 2009 will comprise a series of professional designer workshops, design debates, paper and poster presentations on the theme of Inclusive design into innovation: transforming practice in design, research and business.