The City of Anacortes determined mid-year 2010 to develop a city-wide wayfinding program. BrandQuery worked with City Planner Ryan Larsen to create a plan and design the wayfinding signs.
Our process began with facilitating a number of stakeholder focus group meetings. This included Anacortes business owners, service club members, the Mayor, and City staff. The participants helped us to establish both what was important for this wayfinding program and who the wayfinding is intended to help.
We then took the “discovered information”, organized it and placed the wayfinding destinations by location on a new map developed in-house. This pinpointed the important locations around the City and ultimately acted as a point of placement guide for the wayfinding signs themselves.
We visually surveyed the City multiple times. As Commercial Avenue is the major thoroughfare for Anacortes, locating the majority of the wayfinding on it made the most sense. More importantly, we looked at Commercial Avenue from a visual perspective to determine how the signs would be located. The amount of existing poles and signs up and down the avenue guided our decision to utilize existing City street standards (light poles) for sign attachment. This also reduces the cost of implementation.
With a clear direction for implementation, we set about designing the wayfinding program, creating three solutions for presentation. Alterations were made and the signs you see here are the ones selected (the first displayed “Anacortes” sign is our preferred).
Wayfinding Sign Dimensions:
• Point of Interest Signs: 10.0″ in Diameter
• Directional Sign Panel: 4′-6″ x 8.0″
• Anacortes Entry Way Sign: 25.0′ x 6.0′
BrandQuery recently completed another city-wide wayfinding project for the City of Burlington which is gradually being implemented.
Our work in wayfinding also includes campus signage and internal building wayfinding for the new Campus Center at Bellingham Technical College (BTC) currently under construction. The building was designed by HKP Architects. Previously we designed new building identification signage for four campus buildings also at BTC.
BrandQuery has created signage, both electrical and non for a variety of clients. If you have a building or space that needs identifying or directioning, call BrandQuery!