Innovative Signage for an Innovative Hospital: University of Iowa Stead Family Children's Hospital

First Things First

Our team collaborated with University of Iowa Health Care, Heery International architectural team, and Gilbane, the general contractor, early in the planning process. The signage scope included an entirely new facility during a re-brand. Services included planning, design, manufacture, and installation of all signage for University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital, and updating existing signage with rebranded designs. The signage created includes exterior branding and wayfinding, interior wayfinding signs, interior and exterior donor signage.

Interior Updates

Within UI Stead Family Children’s Hospital, custom Infinity Photopolymer signs with tactile graphics have modular components that are easy and affordable to update in addition to being ADA Compliant. They also are part of the hospital’s wayfinding system that includes floor-by-floor color coding and iconography. During construction, UI Stead Family Children’s Hospital went through a rebranding that required new graphics to be incorporated into the interior and wayfinding signage.

Donor Recognition

Another major component of the project was to incorporate donor recognition displays with several donor walls placed throughout the hospital in elevator lobbies. These donor walls have a distinctive design with a series of glass panels that mimics the look of the quilt pattern used in branded materials throughout the hospital. To help control costs, the Latitude Signage team engineered a solution using glass and in-house digital printing to achieve the same high-end design expectations.

Exterior Signage

The challenge with the exterior signage was to create two immense sets of custom fabricated illuminated letter panels and install them at the top of the hospital, which has 12 levels above ground, and two below ground. Latitude Signage experts translated architectural renderings into a custom sign solution that looked like a carved stone construction with edge-lit LEDs. Latitude engineered the exterior signs and worked with the architectural façade firm to maintain color consistency for the exterior cladding. The results are picture perfect, a true representation of architectural signage.

Heart of the Matter

Collaboration was very important throughout this project to achieve the look and feel of all components of this signage system. From top to bottom this project embodies the Latitude team’s capabilities to engineer, manufacture, and install a complete architectural signage package as part of the planning and construction teams.

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