The City of Columbia, Tennessee is a community of 36,000 located 45 miles south of Nashville along Interstate 65. With an inviting new slogan, “Something Good around Every Corner” and branding effort in place, the city needed a wayfinding system to support its marketing and tourism efforts. From parks and river recreational activities, exciting community events, a historic downtown with local shopping and dining, historic districts and sites, and a growing arts and music scene, the City has much to offer to both residents and visitors. Frazier Associates was commissioned to create a master plan to address both vehicular and pedestrian oriented signs in order to enhance the overall visitor experience in the City of Columbia. Working with City officials and the wayfinding task force, design options and color palettes were selected that related to the recent branding effort and created the most visual appeal. The master plan outlined sign types, locations, destinations, and construction intent documents.
The Wayfinding Master Plan assessed existing signs in the community and provided locations and placement guidance as well as construction intent documents for all new sign types as shown in the excerpts at right.
Photo simulations of the designed signs help illustrate what the installed components will look like in the actual setting; this tool helps in the selection of colors and other design elements. Below are photosims of the primary gateway signs and the downtown trailblazers. The illustration of the gateway shows how the brick and stone elements of the gateway sign are visually appealing with the site’s lush landscape.
