We live in an age where we are dominated by our mobile phones. Smartphone applications for wayfinding have become increasingly popular ways to navigate and – as long as you're not trying to find your way using Apple Maps – more and more accurate. With City Mapper, one of the better apps available online, recently adding Barcelona and Boston to its ever-growing coverage, are such apps going to render traditional direcitonal signage defunct?

Perhaps not. The market saturation of smart devices has definitely changed the way that many people now navigate, but there is still a need for signage for when bad signal or a poor battery leaves you stranded in an unfamiliar city. Besides, you might be able to find a building due to your sat nav or iPhone, but now you need to find your way around inside. Unfortunately, there probably isn't an app for that. Efficient navigation inside, say, a hospital, is of vital importance and, although mobile phone use is generally accepted in hospital buildings, I wouldn't bank on the NHS mapping every corridor into an application.

There is a lot to think about when designing signage in public buildings. For example, how much information is to be given at any specific point? Do you put all the directions onto one sign and hope visitors have good memories, or do you utilise a system of progressive disclosure – only giving away enough information to reach the next sign or information point?

Another decision that needs to be considered is the language used throughout the signage. A hospital in South Dakota encountered this issue when revamping its building, eventually choosing to use simpler names for individual wards or departments than the medical alternatives.

Small details that we take for granted on mobile wayfinding programs often cause serious problems for signage designers. On our phones, the map is never static, relying on in-built compasses to show us our direction of travel. When designing and constructing a totem or built-in system on the street, the ability to correlate the sign with the direction of travel is paramount.

This is something that WalkNYC had to overcome when designing a system of directional signs that could be universally understood; its research and user testing revealed that rotating the maps 'heads-up', to show the street network as it appeared to the pedestrian, was the most efficient way of providing quick, useful wayfinding information.

Such city-wide installations seem to be, more and more, the future of analogue wayfinding. MiGuide, which has been installed by MagneticNorth in Manchester, aims to become the benchmark for such networks, offering the ability to actively promote, restaurants, shops or other events that are taking place locally. Cord, the operating system behind the network, is also being used to power screens in the Town Hall and City Library; this alignment of resources could potentially pave the way for an 'interactive OOH city', as Manchester now has the basic digital infrastructure in place to build upon.

Other networks are popping up, catering not just for the lost and confused, but also to promote an active lifestyle, such as with TfL's 'Legible London', whose 1,300 signs are integrated with its transport hubs, as well as indicating steps, pavement widths and pedestrian crossings to give clearer information to disabled pedestrians - information often lacking from the app on your phone.

One of the biggest British events in memory – London 2012 – also resulted in one of the largest wayfinding projects in recent years, with the city needing to accommodate over 800,000 extra visitors during the event. As well as the requirement for consistent branding, the team creating the signage was hampered by a tight budget and a zero landfill requirement. By integrating the wayfinding and brand teams, and using a bright shade of pink as the official colour for both teams' communications, LOCOG managed to provide signage that was both functional and attention-grabbing, while also brand-relevant.

One way or another, there is still a human need for more traditional wayfinding, something that was recently recognised through the 'wayfinding and environmental graphics' Design Week award. With a shortlist of five strong contenders, featuring signage from elegant metal plaques to designs based on the liquid form, the award proved that, although we can reach almost everywhere with Citymapper, it will never be quite as pretty.

Wayfinding signage is an important, if overlooked, part of the modern urban environment, which is still innovating and evolving, not only in technological terms – with the introduction of signage networks and smart signage – but also aesthetically, fitting with the changing style of modern architecture. It is a diverse visual communications method, used in everything from life-saving environments, such as hospitals, to stylish new developments that incorporate plenty of digital amenities.

In the same way that people have the notion that digital will supersede print, the idea of wayfinding falling to the wayside due to the smartphone seems unjustified. Creating an app for every public building, hospital and park that is built would incur a vast cost and, taking into account the innovations taking place in directional signage, seems more than a little unnecessary.