Enhanc­ing Patient Expe­ri­ence With Cam­pus-Wide Sig­nage at OSF Health­Care Can­cer Institute

Brand­ing the build­ing exte­ri­or required installing three mas­sive, high-vis­i­bil­i­ty logo signs. How­ev­er, the facil­i­ty fea­tures an archi­tec­tur­al ter­ra-cot­ta pan­el façade that is very del­i­cate. To pre­vent stress frac­tures and main­tain weath­er­proof­ing, Lat­i­tude’s instal­la­tion crews came up with a method to anchor sig­nage brack­ets direct­ly into the struc­tur­al frame­work and seal all pan­el pen­e­tra­tions from the inside out.

• Low-impact equip­ment deploy­ments: Because land­scap­ing was fin­ished before sign instal­la­tion began, heavy sur­face machin­ery could not be used. Instead, our expert instal­la­tion team used high-rise swing stages dropped from the roof to install mas­sive build­ing-mount­ed logo signs with­out dis­turb­ing ground-lev­el ter­rain.
   
• Inte­grat­ed cam­pus wayfind­ing mas­ter plan: While Lat­i­tude pro­vid­ed an ini­tial exte­ri­or wayfind­ing sig­nage pack­age the client loved, as the com­plex con­tin­ued to grow and evolve, OSF Health­Care lead­ers felt they need­ed even more direc­tion­al and wayfind­ing sig­nage. Our sig­nage plan­ning experts assessed exist­ing sig­nage and traf­fic routes, address­ing wayfind­ing con­straints and issues in con­sul­ta­tion with our client. We then seam­less­ly inte­grat­ed these signs with the orig­i­nal sig­nage pack­age, ensur­ing con­ti­nu­ity in nav­i­ga­tion aids.

Using con­struc­tion plans, our expe­ri­en­tial graph­ic design team pro­grammed every inte­ri­or space with appro­pri­ate room ID sig­nage, wayfind­ing sig­nage, fire safe­ty maps, ADA-com­pli­ant code sig­nage, and more. The facil­i­ty required an adapt­able, ele­gant sys­tem with clean lines and pol­ished edges for easy vis­i­bil­i­ty and identification.

• Floor-by-floor themes: Using the high-end blue glass walls in the facility’s ele­va­tor lob­bies, Lat­i­tude devel­oped unique flo­ral motifs for each floor lev­el. The nature themes gen­er­ate a sense of peace and calm while ori­ent­ing vis­i­tors to the space.
• Cus­tom ameni­ty brand­ing: Cus­tom sig­nage, vinyl accents, and wall graph­ics for com­mu­ni­ty spaces includ­ing din­ing facil­i­ties and cafes cre­ate a cohe­sive, wel­com­ing feel through­out the campus.

The OSF Foun­da­tion aims to hon­or impact­ful donors, reflect­ed in the inclu­sion of a large donor wall, named spaces, and room donor sig­nage at the Can­cer Insti­tute. The main donor wall is a bold 50’x10’ instal­la­tion in a cen­tral lobby.

• The vision: The archi­tec­tur­al vision for the wall required mount­ing a stag­gered arrange­ment of 16” wide mat­te acrylic pan­els over an uneven, nat­ur­al stone wall. The pan­el lay­out cre­at­ed a flu­id wave-like effect accent­ed by vary­ing blue hues. The indi­vid­ual donor plaques fea­tured pre­mi­um, dig­i­tal­ly print­ed raised lettering.
• The instal­la­tion: Drilling tra­di­tion­al mount­ing holes into the uneven stone wall risked frac­tur­ing the stone. Lat­i­tude col­lab­o­rat­ed close­ly with the stone man­u­fac­tur­er to estab­lish a zero-impact drilling method. Using a cus­tom-built drill, the instal­la­tion team suc­cess­ful­ly cre­at­ed 300 holes over four days with­out caus­ing a sin­gle stress crack or frac­ture in the stone wall.

Man­ag­ing the logis­tics of mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar health­care devel­op­ments requires a sin­gle point of account­abil­i­ty. The Lat­i­tude team excels at man­ag­ing the logis­tics of large-scale projects like this one. 

Have ques­tions on our Design-Build process or health­care sig­nage? Con­nect today to start the con­ver­sa­tion.