Date

9-17-2026

Department

School of Communication and the Arts

Degree

Master of Fine Arts in Graphic Design (MFA)

Chair

Chris Clark

Keywords

disaster evacuation signage, tsunami evacuation signage, cross-cultural visual communication, international tourists, semiotics, cross-cultural pictogram comprehension, emergency wayfinding, disaster risk communication, risk perception, affect heuristic, Kamakura, Japan, graphic design, augmented reality navigation

Disciplines

Art and Design | Communication

Abstract

Japan’s disaster evacuation signage systems are highly standardized and widely regarded as effective for the domestic population, who operate within a shared cultural framework shaped by years of earthquake drills, formal disaster education, and a common visual vocabulary for risk and evacuation. In coastal cities like Kamakura, however, the audience composition has changed significantly, with millions of international visitors now navigating these spaces each year without the disaster literacy or cultural familiarity that the existing signage was designed to assume. When those shared assumptions about urgency, symbolism, and environmental threat are absent, the communicative force of the system can be significantly diminished, and signage that was intended to signal immediate danger may instead read as informational, decorative, or peripheral within a leisure-oriented environment. This thesis investigates that gap as a problem of cross-cultural visual communication rather than one of regulatory standards or local government compliance. Using Kamakura as the central case study, the research examines existing evacuation signage as a semiotic system whose effectiveness depends on shared meaning between designer and viewer. The research is guided by the following questions: How does Japan’s standardized disaster signage system perform when its audience no longer shares the cultural framework it was designed for? Where does the semiotic breakdown between design intent and viewer interpretation occur in Kamakura’s existing evacuation signage?

What design principles from comparable international systems can inform a more cross-culturally effective signage approach? How can a signage system strengthen cross-cultural communicability without degrading the effectiveness of the system for the domestic population it was originally designed to serve? These questions were investigated through a literature review of twenty three peer reviewed articles and foundational sources across five intersecting domains, three case studies covering Thailand’s post 2004 evacuation system, New Zealand’s national tsunami signage program, and Kamakura’s municipal signage system, and a visual analysis of artifacts from each of those systems. This research informs the cross-cultural disaster signage evaluation framework developed in chapter 3, the semiotic analysis of the current signage documented during field research in Kamakura, and the redesigned signage and AR mobile application presented in chapter 4.

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