When Design + Man­u­fac­tur­ing Col­lab­o­rate: Clients Win!

Imag­ine you’re build­ing a house. The archi­tect cre­ates a bril­liant design. You take it to a con­trac­tor and they give you 100 rea­sons why it won’t work, or they tell you the things you love about the orig­i­nal con­cept will have to change. Frus­trat­ed, you end up with a house that’s func­tion­al but doesn’t have the grandeur you envisioned.

The same often goes for archi­tec­tur­al sig­nage. Design­ers and fab­ri­ca­tors aren’t always on the same page espe­cial­ly if they’re not work­ing togeth­er. The worst feel­ing is think­ing your sign is being installed in three weeks only to find out there’s an issue with the design once it goes to pro­duc­tion. Ryan Hud­nut, Con­struc­tion Design Man­ag­er, over­sees this part of our busi­ness. His expe­ri­ence in both design and fab­ri­ca­tion are the per­fect com­bi­na­tion to lead this process.

Design­ers need to be experts at inter­pret­ing brand stan­dards and putting a cre­ative spin on how logos, col­ors, and fonts work with­in a com­plete archi­tec­tur­al sig­nage pack­age. Fab­ri­ca­tors bring the vision to life. This col­lab­o­ra­tion of spe­cial­ties is essen­tial to Lat­i­tude. Togeth­er they dis­cuss engi­neer­ing, wind load, the best way to add illu­mi­na­tion, and how to val­ue engi­neer mate­ri­als for design. It is pos­si­ble because both the design and all the inte­ri­or and exte­ri­or sign man­u­fac­tur­ing is done in Grin­nell then deliv­ered or shipped to install loca­tions across the country.

“Most prob­lems can be solved before the job even hits pro­duc­tion. Our col­lab­o­ra­tive process allows us to make sug­ges­tions, across spe­cial­ties, about com­pli­ca­tions we have run into on past projects that may be help­ful on the cur­rent project,” says Eugene Peart, Direc­tor of Design. Eugene’s exper­tise in design of both inte­ri­or and exte­ri­or sig­nage allows him to lead and estab­lish such a col­lab­o­ra­tive process.

For exam­ple, Lat­i­tude recent­ly com­plet­ed a project for the Kum & Go Stage at the Iowa State Fair. The con­cept was for a sign that looked like a giant gui­tar with neon lights to hang above the stage. The body of the gui­tar was 22-feet long. It was built in Grin­nell and deliv­ered to the fair­grounds in one piece and hung over the main stage. Design­ers and pro­duc­tion col­lab­o­rat­ed to make the sign with flex­i­ble LED lights that cre­at­ed the look of neon at a much more afford­able price. They also had to engi­neer the sign to make sure it could be secure­ly installed onto a tem­po­rary out­door stage and then eas­i­ly removed, stored, and used for con­sec­u­tive years.

“What’s great about the process at Lat­i­tude, is that a client could lit­er­al­ly come to us with a sketch on a nap­kin, and we could make it hap­pen,” says Mike McK­eag, Pres­i­dent and COO. ​“Our design­ers know how to val­ue engi­neer the design to cre­ate the desired look, and they bounce ideas off the pro­duc­tion team to make sure every engi­neer­ing con­sid­er­a­tion regard­ing weight, weath­er, and wind is tak­en into account.”

This col­lab­o­ra­tive approach also served the John­son Coun­ty Board of Super­vi­sors very well. The Board want­ed a rus­tic-look­ing sign to mark a his­tor­i­cal farm near Iowa City. Lat­i­tude sug­gest­ed a faux corten steel mate­r­i­al, that uses a chem­i­cal reac­tion to cre­ate the look of rust­ed met­al. This sug­ges­tion reduced costs allow­ing the Board to include illu­mi­na­tion in the sign. Bring­ing solar-pow­ered lights into the sign impact­ed the design. Lat­i­tude seam­less­ly reworked the plans for the sign to cre­ate a place in the sign’s stone base to house the solar bat­tery and added an access pan­el that can be removed for maintenance.

“The John­son Coun­ty His­toric Poor Farm project is a great exam­ple of how we can use inno­v­a­tive mate­ri­als and tech­nol­o­gy to go beyond our clients’ expec­ta­tions to cre­ate some­thing that looks great and match­es their desired style while giv­ing them more func­tion­al­i­ty,” says Bryce Carl­son, Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Manager.

If you’re knock­ing around some ideas for an inno­v­a­tive exte­ri­or sign design, let Lat­i­tude make it a real­i­ty. ​“Bring us your wild, crazy ideas,” says Todd Carey, VP Busi­ness Devel­op­ment & Mar­ket­ing. ​“There’s noth­ing more reward­ing for us than to take an idea and bring it to life. The only lim­it is our cre­ativ­i­ty.”