Merit Award
Downtown Indianapolis Signage Program
Location
Indianapolis, Indiana
Client
Downtown Indianapolis, Inc.
Design Firm
Corbin Design
Design Team
Jeffry Corbin (Principal in Charge), Jim Harper, Matt McCormick
Fabricator
Poblocki & Sons
Photographer
Dan Francis
With more than 19 million visitors per year, downtown Indianapolis is experiencing dramatic growth. A number of cultural, sporting and governmental venues are generating significant interest in the downtown, but the competing signs leading to these venues were generating confusion. The goals of developing the new wayfinding program were: to identify downtown as a destination from the highway; to enhance downtown's public image; to better organize and present information about downtown destinations; to simplify traffic patterns by guiding drivers along specific routes; to identify public parking; and to create ongoing policies for signing venues for traffic and pedestrian use. Corbin Design's solution for organizing the information centered on the creation of four quadrants based on the historic City Plan, originally derived from the plan for Washington, DC.
Jury Comment
The designers took a difficult wayfinding challenge and created a unique and effective system based on the simple, symbolic identification of the city quadrants. The map-like quadrant symbol used in a "you are here" style, sets up a strong visual clue for newcomers trying to understand the basics of where they are in the downtown area. Color is used to subtly reinforce wayfinding aspects of the program by identifying near and far destinations.