Case Studies

Record-shattering ticket sales meant Eastern Iowa Airport needed to redesign their entire campus parking, including wayfinding signs, to handle increased traffic. They wanted creative signs, yet they also needed to be responsible financial stewards. ImageFirst’s custom signs made it easy for the airport to find savings, and made it easy for their passengers to find their way.

End User: East­ern Iowa Air­port, Cedar Rapids, IA
Archi­tect: Archi­tec­tur­al Alliance, Min­neapo­lis, MN
Con­struc­tion Man­ag­er: Howard R. Green Com­pa­ny, Cedar Rapids, IA
Envi­ron­men­tal Graph­ic Design­er: Dan Van­Wo­ert, Cedar Rapids, IA
Signs: Cus­tom Alu­minum & Fiber­glass w/​ Poured in Place Con­crete Foun­da­tion
# of Signs: 30

Record-shat­ter­ing tick­et sales meant East­ern Iowa Air­port need­ed to redesign their entire cam­pus park­ing, includ­ing wayfind­ing signs, to han­dle increased traf­fic. They want­ed cre­ative signs, yet they also need­ed to be respon­si­ble finan­cial stew­ards. ImageFirst’s cus­tom signs made it easy for the air­port to find sav­ings, and made it easy for their pas­sen­gers to find their way.

“This is a great exam­ple of how we are a one-stop solu­tion,” said Michael Mc Keag, ImageFirst’s gen­er­al man­ag­er. ​“From the ini­tial stages where we sug­gest­ed a fiber­glass ele­ment that we could bulk man­u­fac­ture to reduce costs, all the way to han­dling the instal­la­tion and over­see­ing the nec­es­sary con­crete work, we showed we are a part­ner as much as a manufacturer.”

That abil­i­ty impressed both air­port offi­cials and the Envi­ron­men­tal Graph­ic Design­er, who appre­ci­at­ed the con­sul­ta­tive approach.

The air­port had worked with a sign design­er to cre­ate a look that would coor­di­nate and com­ple­ment the airport’s entrance sign. Image­First was extreme­ly will­ing to col­lab­o­rate with the design­er to cre­ate the final ver­sion,” said Sara Mau, Direc­tor of Oper­a­tions at The East­ern Iowa Air­port. ​“The com­pa­ny was very respon­sive as the project pro­gressed and took the time to metic­u­lous­ly review all the plans, rec­om­mend­ing pos­si­ble improve­ments based on their expe­ri­ence. Their pro­fes­sion­al­ism was out­stand­ing, and they paid atten­tion to the small­est detail of the signs.”

Design­er Dan Van­Wo­ert said that being open to unusu­al projects and able to accu­rate­ly exe­cute his designs are the stan­dards by which he judges sign com­pa­nies, and Image­First showed they were a part­ner on which he could rely.

“Image­First meets those stan­dards,” he said. ​“They lis­ten to what needs to hap­pen, con­tribute in the dis­cus­sion of design details and are con­sci­en­tious in try­ing to find man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­niques to cre­ate the signs.”

In fact, ImageFirst’s expe­ri­ence in man­u­fac­tur­ing helped them bid the project near­ly 40 per­cent less than the esti­mat­ed bud­get, and helped the design­er real­ize his vision.

They have the exper­tise of work­ing in alu­minum or fiber­glass which gives the design­er tons of options when try­ing to meet design and bud­get criteria.

Dan VanWoert 

“It’s not just about low prices – it’s about cre­ative man­u­fac­tur­ing and effi­cient project man­age­ment,” Mc Keag noted.

East­ern Iowa Air­port Case Study (128 KB)