Finding the way: Designs completed for signage project

Published 7:27 pm Wednesday, February 11, 2015

The final designs for Washington’s wayfinding program are completed and under review by city officials.

The designs were presented by Deep Fried Creative to the City Council during its meeting Monday. The next step would be implementing the project, paying for it and determining whether to do it in phases.

Adam Feldhousen, one of two Deep Fried Creative spokesmen at the meeting, said the colors proposed for the wayfinding signs are consistent with those used in the newest city logos, which were unveiled about two years ago. Feldhousen told the council the wayfinding project calls for replacing and relocating existing wayfinding signs with new signage at important gateways and other strategic locations in the city. Each of those locations would determine the type of sign(s) that would be erected there, he said.

“This is going to be a solid piece of work that’s going to last a long time,” Feldhousen said about each new sign. Should the need arise to change information on a sign, that can be easily done by replacing the vinyl sheet on which the information is printed with an updated vinyl sheet instead of having to replace the entire sign, he said.

“This (design package) has a lot of good flexibility to it,” Feldhousen said.

The wayfinding strategies designed for Washington would improve traffic circulation (vehicles and pedestrians) in the city and direct visitor dollars to where they would have the most economic impact, according to John Rodman, the city’s director of community and cultural services.

In an effort to reduce costs, new signs would be erected on existing utility poles, especially the decorative light poles in the historic and waterfront districts, Rodman said.

“We are working awfully hard to give you some final numbers of what it may cost if we decided to phase the program,” Rodman told the council Monday.

 

 

 

 

 

About Mike Voss

Mike Voss is the contributing editor at the Washington Daily News. He has a daughter and four grandchildren. Except for nearly six years he worked at the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va., in the early to mid-1990s, he has been at the Daily News since April 1986.
Journalism awards:
• Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service, 1990.
• Society of Professional Journalists: Sigma Delta Chi Award, Bronze Medallion.
• Associated Press Managing Editors’ Public Service Award.
• Investigative Reporters & Editors’ Award.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Public Service Award, 1989.
• North Carolina Press Association, Second Place, Investigative Reporting, 1990.
All those were for the articles he and Betty Gray wrote about the city’s contaminated water system in 1989-1990.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Investigative Reporting, 1991.
• North Carolina Press Association, Third Place, General News Reporting, 2005.
• North Carolina Press Association, Second Place, Lighter Columns, 2006.
Recently learned he will receive another award.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Lighter Columns, 2010.
4. Lectured at or served on seminar panels at journalism schools at UNC-Chapel Hill, University of Maryland, Columbia University, Mary Washington University and Francis Marion University.

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