Sig­nage in His­tor­i­cal Build­ings: Lake For­est Library Case Study

The Lake For­est Pub­lic Library was built in 1931. It serves the entire Lake For­est com­mu­ni­ty and is uti­lized by peo­ple of all ages. It is also housed in an archi­tec­tural­ly sig­nif­i­cant clas­sic his­tor­i­cal building.

The Lake For­est Pub­lic Library want­ed to replace the exist­ing, poor­ly designed and very inex­pen­sive signs, as well as oth­er sig­nage that had been cre­at­ed in-house. The main wayfind­ing chal­lenge was direct­ing to the children’s library, which is locat­ed on the low­er level.

The archi­tec­tur­al ren­o­va­tion of the Children’s Depart­ment itself man­dat­ed a new sig­nage sys­tem, which they also want­ed to imple­ment build­ing wide. The sign pro­gram also had to be com­pat­i­ble with the archi­tec­tur­al ele­ments of the build­ing, but also be func­tion­al to improve wayfind­ing and col­lec­tion identification.

The live­ly archi­tec­ture and play­ful­ness of the new space inspired the round shape for the signs along with the dif­fer­ent col­ors with­in the sys­tem, which relat­ed to the age group orga­ni­za­tion of the lit­er­a­ture. A book iden­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem was designed with a cus­tom inte­grat­ed attach­ment for flex­i­bil­i­ty while accen­tu­at­ing the flow of the curved bookstacks.

The more clas­sic his­tor­i­cal Adult sec­tion of the library was enhanced with a sophis­ti­cat­ed but cost-effec­tive sign sys­tem, com­ple­ment­ing the inte­ri­or of the building.

Cir­cuitous wayfind­ing issues, as a result of the library’s fixed archi­tec­ture, were sim­pli­fied through strate­gic place­ment, mes­sage hier­ar­chy and graph­ics on the new signs.

Direc­tion­al and entrance iden­ti­fi­ca­tion sig­nage placed in strate­gic loca­tions proved to be the most appro­pri­ate solu­tion. Lat­i­tude pro­vid­ed com­plete design and plan­ning ser­vices includ­ing wayfind­ing and code required sig­nage elements.