Vibrant Visu­als & Clean Lines at Food Bank for the Heartland

Agri­cul­ture is the inspi­ra­tion for this donor wall. It’s a nod to the heartland’s farm-heavy land­scape and the impor­tant role agri­cul­ture plays in feed­ing and nour­ish­ing the world. Using the nat­ur­al tex­ture and organ­ic lines of the lobby’s fea­ture wall as inspi­ra­tion, we designed a donor recog­ni­tion dis­play of geo­met­ric shapes rep­re­sent­ing hay bales, grass­lands, and crop lines arranged in a lay­ered grid system. 

The shapes are high-pres­sure lam­i­nate wood that match­es the building’s oth­er fin­ish­es. The direc­tion of the wood grain alter­nates on the shapes with some run­ning hor­i­zon­tal­ly and oth­ers ver­ti­cal­ly. It’s a sim­ple and sub­tle design touch that builds visu­al inter­est with­out added pro­duc­tion cost.

To keep the sys­tem orga­nized, dynam­ic, and man­u­fac­tur­ing-friend­ly, the wall is designed into a puz­zle piece lay­out with a mod­u­lar grid of 18″ x 18″ main pan­els, 9″ x 18″ mid-pan­els, 9″ x 9″ accents, and 4.5″ x 9″ sub-pan­els. Blank accent pan­els are placed through­out the lay­out so future donor names can be added as need­ed. The dis­play can also be expand­ed on either side by adding more mod­u­lar grids of shapes.

The orig­i­nal donor sign con­cept did not include pho­tos, but peo­ple are at the heart and soul of this orga­ni­za­tion. The Food Bank for the Heart­land team pro­vid­ed imagery to rep­re­sent the wide range of peo­ple it serves across eth­nic­i­ties, ages, gen­ders, and back­grounds. Andrej Stein­bergs, expe­ri­en­tial graph­ic design­er at Lat­i­tude, arranged the pho­tos to act as accents among the shapes. The images were print­ed on fab­ric via a dye sub­li­ma­tion process that cre­ates high-qual­i­ty graph­ics with rich, dark col­ors and vivid high­lights that are then back­lit for even more of a wow fac­tor. These Sil­i­cone Edge Graph­ics (SEGs) can be eas­i­ly replaced for sim­ple updates and refresh­es of the entire display.

Wiring and elec­tri­cal com­po­nents from the illu­mi­nat­ed pieces need­ed to stay out of sight so it wouldn’t ruin the sleek and under­stat­ed look. A mill­work com­mon backer with a ½‑inch face, paired with a ¾‑inch build-up strip around the perime­ter, gave us a con­tin­u­ous, hid­den gap behind the entire piece to route wiring. 

Dur­ing pro­duc­tion, our team found that the sin­gle elec­tri­cal out­let on the dis­play wall would­n’t be able to pow­er the entire sign. Rather than leav­ing the gen­er­al con­trac­tor or elec­tri­cian to guess where anoth­er out­let should go, Stein­bergs drew up an exact elec­tri­cal loca­tion tem­plate and the project man­age­ment team coor­di­nat­ed with the elec­tri­cal team to add a sec­ond out­let on the wall. All of this was com­plet­ed before installing the sign so instal­la­tion could be com­plet­ed effi­cient­ly and flawlessly.

The pow­er sup­ply box­es tuck neat­ly into the bot­tom of the dis­play behind a remov­able ven­ti­la­tion plate, so the sys­tem stays cool and remains ful­ly ser­vice­able. The entire wall is con­trolled with dual low-volt­age smart plugs so zones can be acti­vat­ed inde­pen­dent­ly or the entire wall can be lit up at once.

The wall blends tex­ture, depth, and illu­mi­na­tion by com­bin­ing cus­tom mill­work with spe­cial elements: 

• 42 pieces of edge-lit acrylic. Cus­tom-cut, cast block acrylic returns (edges) hold LEDs set to a warm col­or tem­per­a­ture, cre­at­ing an invit­ing glow that spills across the panels.
• Six SEG fab­ric pan­els with dye-sub­li­ma­tion print­ing. SEG pan­els deliv­er rich dark col­ors and strik­ing high­lights with­out hot spots thanks to domed, non-hotspot­ting LED technology. 
• Dimen­sion­al typog­ra­phy: Larg­er donor let­ter­ing was made from ¼‑inch acrylic paint­ed white. Small­er donor text was made with ⅛‑inch Row­mark to estab­lish a clear visu­al hier­ar­chy relat­ed to dona­tion sizes.

This Food Bank for the Heart­land donor recog­ni­tion wall is both mod­ern and mean­ing­ful, trans­form­ing the lob­by into a glow­ing tes­ta­ment to the organization’s com­mu­ni­ty sup­port. Blend­ing tex­tures and shapes with exist­ing build­ing ele­ments makes the dis­play feel like it has always been there — and with the abil­i­ty to expand the mod­u­lar design and add names as need­ed, it always will be. 

Have an idea or need an idea to hon­or and inspire? We can help! Con­nect with us here.