City of Fort Lauderdale

FINDING CONSENSUS

Understanding the City’s priorities and needs was crucial to developing solutions that would best serve both the community and its visitors. We collaborated closely with a core team of representatives from the City including the City Manager, City Planners, Parking Department, Parks & Recreation, the Beach CRA, and area stakeholders to insure that our vision aligned with their expectations. We studied many different factors that would affect our proposals including major traffic patterns throughout the City, area public transit, current marketing and branding, existing master plans, public parking locations, City destinations and attractions, existing nomenclature, relevant sign codes, and funding sources. We compiled all of our research, analysis, conclusions and recommendations into a comprehensive report that formed the basis for our proposed wayfinding strategies and designs.

IMPACT AND RELEVANCE

From the start, the City wanted the new gateway identity signs to be an iconic representation of their new vision for the beach, and we explored many different alternative gateway designs ranging from traditional to modern and unconventional forms. The different gateway sign locations posed significant environmental challenges from harsh UV exposure, potentially heavy winds and sandblasting, flooding, FDOT codes and rights-of-way, and strict regulations due to protected sea turtle habitats.

IMPROVED AND EXPANDABLE

The directional sign system’s graphics and color palette are designed to be adaptable to different neighborhoods within the City. Parking directional and identity signs are designed to significantly improve wayfinding to beach parking lots, and with an eye towards the many different public parking conditions throughout the City. Pedestrian scale gateway signs are designed to provide branding along the beach front, and themed kiosks provide both orientation and information to area visitors. The beach front regulatory signs are designed with highly durable materials that will better withstand their harsh oceanside conditions, and with re-designed graphics and symbols that are more friendly to international visitors.