Blogs, News, and Other Links: February 2010

Children's Hospital in Poland

Portfolio of signage, wayfinding, and graphics for a Polish children's hospital [Kasia Kaczmarek]

Healthcare Wayfinding

Thoughts on healthcare wayfinding [GNU Group]

The Value of Glocalization

Thinking locally and nationally when in comes to wayfinding and signage [Corbin Design]

Setting Sights on the Arrow

Article about that most basic but important symbol: the arrow [AIGA]

Changing Landscape of EGD Education

EGD education at universities [Arrows & Icons]

Cisco Simplifies Digital Signage

Cisco offers their Digital Media Creative Services [CNN Money]

Signage at new Red Sox training facility

A look at the signs at the Red Sox new spring training facility in Florida [signweb.com]

Lousy Signage in Well-Designed Buildings

Our company in the Boston area, like architectural signage firms everywhere, routinely receives bid requests from general contractors for the "signage" subcontract portion of construction projects. Unfortunately, we usually encounter documentation that is so seriously flawed we are unable to prepare an accurate bid.

Here are just a few of the problems we have seen:

1. The signage documentation package normally includes a written spec, but almost never includes drawings, a sign message schedule, or sign location plans.
2. The sign contractor is required to submit construction shop drawings for signage, but is given little information about critical variables such as overall size, typestyle, or graphic layout. In other words, design responsibility for the signage elements is assigned to the signage contractor.