Wayfinding sign design designated
New Charles City welcome sign design. Contributed photo.
Proposed wayfinding signs for Charles City. Contributed photo.
By Thomas Nelson, tnelson@charlescitypress.com
Visitors to Charles City will soon have a better idea on how to get around.
The city of Charles City and Charles City Community Revitalization have spearheaded an effort to design wayfinding signs and get them placed in the future.
Last year Community Revitalization’s board and the city of Charles City cited wayfinding as one of their top priorities.
A combined committee formed to work toward wayfinding about eight months ago. It included community members, utility officials, members of city government and community development officers, all from Charles City.
The design portion is finished and approved. The next step is putting up the signs.
Charles City was awarded $4,500 to help fund the design project from the Main Street Iowa Program.
The total cost of the design is a little over $31,000, minus the $4,500 from the grant.
The design process had to be completed by Aug. 15 to get the grant.
“It culminated last night when the council approved a wayfinding plan,” said Charles City Administrator Steven Diers. “Moving forward we’ll work on getting some general cost estimates on these various types of signs.”
Diers estimates the signs will be installed over the next several years, based on sign cost and available funding.
“My initial goal is this coming budget season to be able to start implementing some wayfinding signage,” he said.
The plan is primarily a new sign placement program, with only the welcome signs replacing existing signage, Diers said.
The project would provide signs directing people to various public places of interest.
Corbin Design from Traverse City, Michigan, helped design the signs for Charles City.
“We’re pleased the cost came in under budget,” said Mark Wicks, Charles City community revitalization director.
Corbin helped with the process, not just in the designing the signs, but in knowing what the Department of Transportation allows and doesn’t allow, Wicks said.
Originally the price for the design process was set to be around $50,000.
Designing a welcome
Efforts to create a city identifier led to a simple design showing the suspension bridge over the water, pictured inside a cog or gear, like the one in central park.
“The rule of thumb is you have four seconds —when you’re driving you have four second to read a sign,” Wicks said. “If you have a sign that says eight or 10 different things, you’re not going to get to it all.”
The welcome signs around Charles City will be replaced and the new ones will show the new design, minus the “America’s Home Town” logo.
“We want something that is uniquely identified with Charles City. ‘America’s Home Town’ is not unique to Charles City,” Wicks said.
Boston and several other cities around the U.S. call themselves “America’s Home Town.”
“We’re not saying don’t use it, we’re just saying on signage we want something unique to Charles City,” Wicks said. “‘America’s Home Town’ is a nice saying, it’s not unique.”
Three of the four welcome signs are still up, but the signs welcoming people to Charles City are in pretty rough shape.
“They will need to be replaced at some point,” Diers said. “They would be our highest cost items.” He guessed other signs would be installed before the welcome signs are replaced.
The signs currently out by the highways were one of the first things that Community Revitalization was involved with, Wicks said.
The plan is to have 35 wayfinding signs in various spots around the community.
“You don’t want a million signs up there,” Wicks said.
Project History
The history of the project goes back at least four years to when Wicks first discussed it as a possibility.
“We really got serious three years ago when we took part — we being Community Revitalization’s Design Committee — took part in a first impressions visit,” Wicks said.
A first impressions visit is when groups from paired cities of similar size visit one another unannounced.
Wicks and his group went to Hampton and they noticed a lack of signs pointing out popular destinations.
Wayfinding aids directing vehicle and pedestrian traffic to key destinations in the city or community, Wicks said.
“We had trouble finding city hall. We had trouble finding the Police Department and we had trouble finding the Chamber of Commerce,” Wicks said.
People from Hampton had no problem — they already knew their way around, Wicks said.
“In our discussing that, we found out Hampton had the exact same thing to say about Charles City,” Wicks said.
The reason to have wayfinding is not so much for residents as it is for visitors and guests.
“We know where we’re going. People not from Charles City, visitors and guests, don’t,” Wicks said.
RAGBRAI coming through Charles City brought a lot of questions from the visitors to residents about where the school or other places where. Wayfinding signs would help those visitors.
GPS is an option for some, but many people don’t use GPS, Wicks said.
“GPS is only as a good as the programming and there are a lot of things that aren’t programmed in there right,” Wicks said. “We have people stop by here (at the Community Development Office) all the time, who want directions to City Hall.”
GPS has misdirected people to I Don’t Care, a pizza parlor down the street, Wicks said.
The design for wayfinding was approved by the Charles City Council Monday Aug. 7 in a unanimous vote.
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