Out & About & On the Boards: Shriners Hospitals for Children - Portland

Just in time for the dedication on Sunday, TubeArt Signs is unrolling and installing the temporary version of a wall graphic for the hospital's new cafe. Showcasing the Oregon East-West All-Star Football game, the mural has been produced in short order on digitally printed vinyl. The permanent installation in July will be of durable, graffiti resistant high pressure phenolic laminate.

Cherry is with the installers, making sure everything is copacetic.

Shriners staff, board members and SRG Architects stop by to check progress and find lots of familiar faces in the photos on the mural. Ready for Sunday!!

On the Boards & Out & About: Chemeketa Community College & OBP Digital

Chemeketa Community College's new campus in McMinnville, Oregon rests in beautiful Yamhill Valley, home to rolling hills and world class vineyards. Working with Yost Grube Hall Architecture to promote "sense of place" within a new classroom building, we designed specialty graphics to punctuate major corridors. Featuring photographs by Janis Miglavs, these full wall graphics appear as windows to nearby valley views.

The wall graphics will be digitally printed and subsurface laminated to glass. We joined Rich and Julie Anderson of Architectural Metalcrafters, sign contractors for the project, at OBP Digital to review OBP's printing capabilities. Above, Cherry unwraps samples from similar projects.

Chris Underwood gives a tour of his shop and chats about our project. Started by Chris's grandfather and formerly called Oregon Blueprint, OBP Digital is a great example of keeping up with technology and changing to meet the needs of our evolving industry.

Our projects succeed with collaboration, from project kick-off with owners and architects to the last details of fabrication and installation. We relish it all.

Out & About: Sakura Sunday - Portland, OR

Portland's First Annual Cherry Blossom Festival held special meaning as a celebration of blossoms, the season of spring and friendship between the United States and Japan. Portland's waterfront cherry trees were a gift to the City from the Japanese Grain Importers Association in 1989. This year, the city's first Sakura Sunday - Cherry Blossom Festival - and its gifts of hope and prayers were dedicated to victims of Japan's recent earthquakes and tsunamis.

Japan has celebrated cherry blossom season for centuries with picnics, music and dance under the trees. Portland's festival also included a riverfront gathering where, led by a Japanese priest, well-wishers sent prayers to Japan and flowers into the Willamette River which leads to the Pacific Ocean via the mighty Columbia.

Participants of all ages celebrated together under the trees.

On the Boards: Bay Area Hospital - Coos Bay, OR

A site visit and project kick-off for our work on the expansion of Bay Area Hospital provided a great excuse for a road trip to Oregon's south coast on April Fool's Day. We felt anything but foolish upon leaving cold, wet Portland for this warmer, sunnier climate zone.

ZGF Architect Paul Evans joined us for a site walk and documentation of existing conditions. Above, Abby snaps a photo of an existing sign while Paul correctly identifies its typeface: Helvetica - for which we now have so many alternatives!

Traversing the site with the sun on our backs.

Inside, we took on the role of visitor to understand how existing signs and other means help patients and visitors find their way. Here, Paul asks a volunteer what happens when no one is present.

Our friendly volunteer turned around the counter top sign to show the following message:

Following the site walk, we met our clients for a lively discussion of signage and wayfinding not only for the new addition, but for the entire hospital as it responds to the new construction.

In the News: Anacostia Library - Washington, DC

Anacostia Library is the first of six new DC Public Library buildings to be completed in a program to build architectural noteworthy facilities in a variety of Washington neighborhoods. Featured in this month's ARCHITECTURAL RECORD magazine and designed by Freelon Group of Durham NC, Anacostia Library also showcases new sign standards designed by Anderson Krygier, Inc. for the DC Library system. Above, canopy mounted dimensional letters are designed to be friendly, approachable and welcoming.

New sign standards include both exterior and interior signage. Above, an illuminated parking directional points the way to parking around the block and behind the building.

In addition to six new Libraries, the sign standards will be implemented in all existing contemporary libraries as they are updated and remodeled. The historic libraries of Washington DC are also being updated and AK has developed a sign standard to complement their historic character. Georgetown is the first of six to have implemented the historic sign program. Five additional historic libraries are in process.

Inside the library, collection identification on the stack end panels is easy to update and change as the collection moves around the library.

Interior palette and finishes are bold, colorful and inspiring.

On the Boards: Shriners Hospitals for Children - The Greatest Little Shrine Game in the World

Here we are, just weeks before our deadline, looking at photos and gathering content for a 28' wide x 8' high wall graphic slated for the new cafe at Shriners Hospital for Children, Portland. It will showcase the stellar efforts of Oregon Shriners and their communities in a year-round effort to produce the Shriners Hospital Oregon East-West All-Star Football Game from which 97% of net proceed go directly to patient care. Above, Cherry interviews participants as we gather photos for the display.

Exactly, one month later: design is complete, copy is written (and vetted) and we're presenting to the national facilities director for Shriners Hospitals for Children.

We're in the cafe, checking things out. Note the palette: carpet and graphic in perfect harmony.

The Graphic Wall. Our next installment: April 8th installation for April 10 dedication. Sometimes things go smoothly. We don't take it for granted.

Out & About & On the Boards: Fort Campbell, KY -Blanchfield Army Community Hospital

We made our first visit to a military hospital when we traveled with ZGF Architects to Fort Campbell, KY (home of the "Screaming Eagles") for a site visit . We're working on an addition that includes the Emergency Department (ED) where we were very inspired by the people we met in uniform. Above, Karen is listening to Major Schaeffer, head of the ED and mother of twin boys age 2 1/2. A veteran of two tours in Iraq, Major Schaeffer was gone for a full year of her boys' short lives. Her husband is getting ready to ship out for a third tour of his own.

On the boards: The Story of Writing - EA Lecture

In Portland Center Stage's production of FUTURA, we witness typography professor and librarian Lorraine Wexler give a lesson on the history of fonts in a future where the art of pen and paper has all but disappeared. The professor is particularly fond of the typeface, Futura.

In 2006, when Anderson Krygier designed signage and graphics for the new Gerding Theater at the Armory, we just happened to think Futura the perfect typeface to marry the original architecture's classic proportions with the modernist lines of its contemporary interventions. What could be more perfect than for AK to be a sponsor of the play!

As part of our sponsorship, Elizabeth rolled out butcher paper and wrote with real pens to demonstrate the history of writing in an interactive, pre-matinee chat before the Sunday March 6 presentation. Over 60 people attended.

In the theater lobby, amazing letterform sculptures continued the typography and lettering theme.

Share the Love: Valentine Party to benefit CHAP - Children's Healing Art Project

We continued our tradition of combining social activity with social activism at our second annual "Share the Love" Party in celebration of our favorite holiday. This year, we shared the love with CHAP - Children's Healing Art Project - for a total lovefest. Above, Frank Etxaniz, CHAP founder, artistic director and inspirational teacher is on the ladder to install custom art panels created by CHAP's Children's Art Factory to fit the walls and doors of our conference room.

CHAP - Children's Healing Art Project - brings the healing power of art to children in crisis and their families with a mobile team of teaching artists working in Portland's children's hospitals. CHAP classes offer an art experience that engages and inspires -- where children can be seen for their artistic talents and not for their diseases or diagnoses. In 2010, CHAP reached over 10,000 and their families. Learn more at www.chap.name.

Children's Art is interpreted in a variety of apparel and other items such as the hand loomed carpet featuring a "love bunny" - just in time for the Year of the Rabbit! At right is a "bling" heart embedded into a giant resin foot that served as our bar for the evening.

Out & About: UC San Diego Sun Break

Abby & EA spent a delightful day touring the University of California San Diego campus in preparation for our work on a new lab building for the UCSD School of Medicine.
When a campus sign shop updates and maintains our sign programs, we like to know their capabilities before we design - that way, changes are seamless and our design remains intact. At UCSD, Mike runs the sign shop and he proudly showed us around to help us understand what's possible in terms of materials and fabrication technologies. We were impressed!
Bright blue sky, red hot pokers and blooming eucalyptus!
Abby & Renee Kajimoto, ZGF Architecture, smile into the bright sun while bundled for the cool weather.

Out & About: Signs of interest - China

Who can resist brush written Kanji in Beijing- follow the arrow!
Movable stanchions in the Forbidden City: symbols, arrows, Kanji and Chinglish.
Poetic regulatory signs: "Perilous hills, no climbing please" at left and "Tender fragrant grass, how hardhearted to trample them" at right. Note bollards at the Olympic Village shaped like the nearby Birds Nest.
Absolute favorite: "Carolina Blue" city road signs tell which way lanes turn (left photo) and illuminated signs (right photo) diagram traffic patterns ahead. Avoid the red areas!
Drinking water stations in the airport. Fill your water bottle only if you are a native: foreigners beware. At right, restroom icon tells you what kind of toilet inside.

Out & About: Rainier Building, Pierce College - Lakewood WA

We arrived at Pierce College's Lakewood campus on a typical late December day - pretty much overcast. When we entered one of the building's two winter gardens, the tiny bit of sun exploded to shower us with light.
The four levels of this state-of-the-art science & technology complex are organized around the winter gardens where, due to the site's steep grade, no more than three levels are stacked in any one spot.
Abby reviews a freestanding directory featuring building maps in both plan and section views.
Floor level entries off the winter gardens are color-coded to help with wayfinding. Opsis Architecture designed the building.

Out & About: A change of scenery - Tucson AZ

As winter approaches and Northwest skies go gray, a change of scenery nourishes the spirit and dazzles the eyes. In Tucson AZ, skies are blue and the saguaro cactus rules the horizon.
Xeriscaping is a way of life and art.
Javelinas (wild pigs) show up for a breakfast of barrel cactus -- in the garden (center) and as sculptures in the shopping mall (left).