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(November 2011) posted on Wed Oct 26, 2011

Companies create brilliant graphics for South Carolina children's hospital

By Steve Aust

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The Palmetto Health Children’s Hospital, located in Columbia, SC, opened after its retrofit. It previously served as a cancer-treatment center for adults. To help create atmosphere and direct concerned parents, Palmetto Health enlisted Image Resource Group (IRG), also of Columbia, to develop a wayfinding, donor-recognition and ADA-sign program for the hospital.

Rick Hayward, an IRG vice-president and partner, said, “Although the building’s shell was the same, the retrofit was so extensive that we treated it as a new build. So, site surveys weren’t really appropriate.”
The primary architect, Stanley Beaman & Sears, handled the EGD and sign-messaging schedule. The project entailed approximately 700 signs, murals and directional components.

IRG fabricated the directory signs using Chemetal aluminum laminate sheet, which it etched and backfilled with Matthews acrylic-polyurethane paint. For wayfinding and directional signage, IRG decorated 3M Controltac with Comply vinyl on a Roland DGA SolJet Pro III SC-540 with low-solvent inks, and subsequently applied them to acrylic.

For large signs, IRG installed the wayfinding directories and other large signs with standoffs secured to countersunk screws; for smaller signs, such as patient-room IDs, VHB tape and silicone adhesive were sufficient.

Under IRG’s direction, Vomela complemented the environment with wall graphics printed on 3M Controltac with Comply air-release media on an inkjet, roll-to-roll printer.

“The creative types of signs, and the numerous variations, were chal-lenging,” Hayward said. “However, children’s hospitals are, by nature, colorful and inventive, which made the job particularly enjoyable.”