New look comes to signs around Berry.

McCarty Forte, COM 250 Reporter

ROME, Ga. – Berry College has entered the early stages of a campus wide project that will give all signage a consistent look.

A project has been in the works for several years to re-sign the entire Berry campus. The project is directed toward the more permanent signage on campus, such as directional signs, street signs, building labels, and historical markers. These signs can be found around every area of the campus, however, these signs currently look different according to the area of campus they are found in. The re-signing project will be stretched out over a two year period and will provide a more uniform look to all signs on campus, regardless of where they are found. 

The current Director of Public Relations and Marketing, Jordan Cameron, made it very clear that he believes this project will go a long way in making the Berry campus more appealing to students and visitors alike.

“Moving forward, to try to beautify the campus, it makes sense for us to unify the look and feel of all the signs across the board.” Cameron said.

The process behind this project goes much more in-depth than one might assume. Many departments across campus must come together and discuss the positives and negatives of such a project. A few of the departments involved include Admissions, Personal Relations, Physical Plant, and the WinShape organization, among others. These departments discuss what types of signs they would benefit from the most, what the design should look like, and the location where they would be most effective.

Graphic designer Meaghan Marr, of Berry’s Creative Services department, stressed the importance of the entire design process.

“We come up with what they look like on our computers,” Marr said. “But then we also have to pay attention to the material that they’re going to be printed on. It needs to be something that will show the color really well and keep the color really well. The particular material that is used to print the signs has to be able to withstand all possible weather conditions. So we have to take that into consideration as well.”

Once they reach a decision about design and location, they must then bring in a signage consultant or contractor to smooth out all the details and get a cost estimate.

One of the final, yet most important, steps is to test the readability of the sign. Typically, the department in charge will order a few different size fonts, then hang them all and compare. They choose the most effective size and then place their complete order in that size.

“We are moving into a phase where we are looking at signage very heavily, but we are kind of at the front end of that project.” Cameron said.

The last time any project of this sort was put into action was in 2008 when all the historic landmark signs on campus were refurbished. On a campus of over 27,000 acres, a project of this size will surely be noted by all who step foot onto the Berry campus.