New Wayfind­ing Sig­nage Gives a Small Town Big City Vibes

Col­or­ful streetscape sig­nage through­out Anamosa, Iowa greets vis­i­tors with a pol­ished look.

Design­ing Wayfind­ing Signage

To kick off the design process, Lat­i­tude devel­oped three dis­tinct looks for the city to review. Anamosa city lead­ers select­ed an open, mod­u­lar design that could be mount­ed to exist­ing poles as well as to new sig­nage poles. 

Alu­minum pan­els on the signs are a flex­i­ble option for Anamosa. The pan­els can be removed or updat­ed if there are changes in the future. Reflec­tive white vinyl let­ter­ing makes it easy to read the direc­tion­al signs any time of day or night with­out hav­ing to have the signs illuminated. 

“We cre­at­ed cus­tom mount­ing hard­ware for the signs,” says Carl­son. ​“Since some signs were being retro­fit­ted onto exist­ing poles and some were being attached to new poles we had to accom­mo­date a wide range of pole diam­e­ters. The flex­i­ble cus­tom mount­ing fea­ture also allowed the installers to adjust the height of the signs to work around tree branch­es or oth­er impediments.”

A Plan for Installing Direc­tion­al Signage

One of the trick­i­est parts of devel­op­ing wayfind­ing sig­nage is deter­min­ing exact­ly where the signs should go. Our sig­nage experts did an analy­sis of how peo­ple entered the town and iden­ti­fied key places where dri­vers were mak­ing decisions. 

The wayfind­ing sig­nage in Anamosa focus­es on direct­ing vis­i­tors to pop­u­lar munic­i­pal sites and to sev­er­al pub­lic park­ing areas. ​“We thought through how peo­ple will use the wayfind­ing sig­nage from their vehi­cles and on foot. For exam­ple, once peo­ple are parked they will see a direc­to­ry map in the park­ing lot guid­ing them with walk­ing direc­tions to key points. Our team phys­i­cal­ly walked around Anamosa on sev­er­al occa­sions to make sure all the sig­nage loca­tions made sense and worked with­in the city’s exist­ing struc­tures,” says Carlson. 

From this study, a plan was cre­at­ed with sign types and the loca­tion for the best user expe­ri­ence for peo­ple get­ting around town. Keep in mind, the gen­er­al audi­ence for these signs aren’t locals that know where they are going, but new-com­ers and vis­i­tors who need to feel com­fort­able quickly.

What Copy to Use on Wayfind­ing Signage?

Once there was a plan for the sig­nage loca­tions, the team refined the exact text that would be on each sign. ​“Wayfind­ing sig­nage works best when it has sim­ple words in a large font that will give users a quick read to direct them to select­ed tar­gets,” Carl­son says. ​“To make the most impact we used words like ​‘Hos­pi­tal’ instead of ​‘Jones Region­al Med­ical Center.’”

This lev­el of atten­tion to detail makes the wayfind­ing sig­nage suc­cess­ful. High impact signs sim­pli­fy nav­i­gat­ing the city and cre­ate a cohe­sive expe­ri­ence for vis­i­tors. ​“We didn’t want to add any visu­al clut­ter to the town. Our goal was to cre­ate a crisp, clean solu­tion that made it eas­i­er to get around, and I think the results speak for themselves.” 

If you were in town for RAG­BRAI this sum­mer, will be in town for Pump­kin­fest in the fall, or just want to hop off High­way 151 for a scenic stop, the new Wayfind­ing sig­nage in Anamosa will wel­come you to your destination. 

And if you’re not cruis­ing through north­east Iowa but want to learn more about streetscape sig­nage, reach out to one of our sig­nage experts.