How do you get around in an unfamiliar city? What if the language is completely different from English? What kind of guidebook can help you bridge the communication gap? Access Tokyo is a successful travel guide to one of the most complex cities in the world. It is also an example of information design, the goal of which is clarity and usefulness.

Richard Wurman began the Tokyo project as an innocent, without previous experience in that city. His challenge was to see if he could understand enough about Tokyo to make major decisions about what to include in a guidebook. He also needed to develop useful instruction to help the English-speaking tourist get around. Ignorance (lack of information) and intelligence (knowing how to find that information) led him to ask the questions that brought insight and order to his project. Using his skill in information and book design, the designer used his own experience as a visitor to translate the experience of Tokyo for others.

Access Tokyo presents the historical, geographical, and cultural qualities that make Tokyo unique, as well as resources and locations for the outsider. Maps are a particular challenge since they require reducing information to its essential structure. The map for the Yamanote Line, a subway that rings Tokyo, is clear and memorable. The guide is bilingual because of the language gap between English with it Roman alphabet and Japanese with its ideographic signs. The traveler can read facts of interest in English but can also show the Japanese translation to a cab driver.

Wurman also wanted to get the cultural viewpoint across. To this end, he asked Japanese architects, painters, and designers to contribute graphics to the project. The colorful tangram (a puzzle made by cutting a square of paper into five triangles, a square, and a rhomboid) is abstract in a very Japanese way. Access Tokyo bridges the culture chasm as well as the information gap.