Parking and Transportation Map

Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show 2022 - Parking and Transit Map

Illustration and Design by John Potter - Escape Key Graphics
Client: Informa Markets

For more (and more up to date) information about the 2022 Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show visit their official site at

Following the 2021 hiatus, the team at Informa Markets was dedicated to enhancing all aspects of the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, including its wayfinding materials. The development of the 2022 transit map felt like a more collaborative and equitable process than in some previous years, with a shared focus on creating a more effective tool for attendees.

Together, we made several key decisions to improve clarity. We agreed to reduce the complexity of the graphical icons, opting for color coded dots or simplified symbols wherever possible. A specific request to remove color from non essential elements, including the green tint previously used for land areas, proved to be excellent advice that significantly cleaned up the visual field. We also removed all depictions of unlabeled roads and other superfluous details. The lines indicating land based transit routes were made much thinner and changed from a dashed to a solid style. Show venues were clearly indicated on the map with clean sans serif type and directional arrows, supplemented by a simple color key of squares that acted as small, consistent venue icons. A major improvement was the treatment of shuttle and water taxi stops; they were keyed with clear icons, but the detailed routes were visually separated, making the boarding points much easier to identify at a glance. Colored lines still showed the general path of the transit system, but they no longer competed visually with the stop locations.

The core keying systems were maintained for user familiarity. Parking was indicated with white numerals on maroon dots, water taxis with black letters on yellow dots, and shuttle stops with white letters on black dots. As mentioned, routes used a separate color key. The Brightline station was marked with a distinct icon. All icons were standardized to a uniform size, creating a more harmonious and professional layout. The entire map and its accompanying menu were designed to fit neatly as a double page spread in the official show program, a publication for which I also handled the page layout starting in 2022.

While the list of parking addresses remained with the map, future editions would remove the dots from the illustration itself, trusting attendees to use the provided addresses with their GPS navigation.

I was very pleased to produce this map. It represents a significant positive evolution, the result of years of iterative refinement and constructive feedback. While no design is perfect, this 2022 edition stands as a clear, functional, and well organized transportation guide. It serves as a reminder that developing effective transit maps is a complex challenge, one that benefits greatly from sustained collaboration and a willingness to simplify.