The development of tourism, recreation and forest education is inextricably linked to the creation
of specific infrastructure on forest lands. However, this infrastructure, especially concerning
education, is not always fully functional. Growing expectations of the public in relation to the
social functions of forests, make it necessary to monitor and also verify the content presented
on educational boards, which are the basic equipment of educational trails. There is little literature
on what criteria a model educational board should meet. Also, few works refer to the evaluation
of ergonomics and usability of educational trails and elements of their equipment. The aim of
this study is to evaluate the educational boards, taking into account recommendations concerning
the functionality of the boards, referring mainly to the graphic design. A total of 89 educational
boards were analyzed in the Regional Directorate of State Forests in Lublin in six forest districts.
The first stage of the study was a field inspection of the current technical condition of educational
boards on selected trails, together with photographic documentation of each piece of trail’s
equipment. Then, in an indoor setting, a grid was applied to each photo of the educational board
using the Canva graphics program, so that the image was divided into 9 rectangles of equal size.
Each rectangle was assigned number from 1 to 9 in order to analyze in which part of the board
textual and graphic content is most often placed, and in which textual and graphic information
is mixed. The results obtained were summarized in criterion tables, taking into account the per−
centage of each analyzed criterion on educational boards. Most of the boards were dominated
by content in graphic form (48.32%), varied in size (58.43%) and presented with appropriate
gaps (called light) (82.02%). Most educational boards also had a white background (52.81%).
In the case of the application of the principle of tripartition, less than 39.33% of the educational
boards complied with the requirement to present information in the central part of the board in
graphic form. All analyzed boards respected the requirements of the so−called law of proximity.
The principle of tri−division is one of the key elements allowing to maintain and keep the attention
of people visiting forest trails. The consequence of not applying this rule may be a lower interest
of forest users in the content presented on boards, which nullifies the effort put in spreading
forest education