New Signs Help Visitors Uncover More Than Garlic

The thousands of visitors who find their way to the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival this summer will have a little help finding what else the city has to offer after a series of new wayfinding signs go up around town, said Visitors Bureau Director Jane Howard.

An ornate “test sign,” the first of 18 planned by the end of July, is already up on the east side of 10th and Chestnut streets.

“It’s so exciting to see this in process,” said the director.

The project is a collaboration between the city of Gilroy and the Gilroy Visitors Bureau. Plans for the signs began in the bureau in 2008, said Howard.

After completing permits with Caltrans for the area of Highway 152, a total of 26 of the signs will be featured around the town, representing the first phase of the project that will ultimately see dozens more of the signs around Gilroy. 

Similar to communities with a robust wayfinding network like San Luis Obispo, Gilroy’s network will help visitors find major city attractions, including the library, Gilroy Gardens and the many wineries that surround the city.

Don Dey, Gilroy’s transportation engineer, worked with the bureau to help ensure that the signs were readable and guided traffic through the city in a sensible way, he said.

"They maintained the artistic quality of the signs, and I provided the technical guidance,” he said.

Local design firm Articulate Solutions helped create the final product.

“Lots of great feedback–very exciting!” wrote Katherine Filice, CEO and executive creative director of the firm, in an email.

The Gilroy City Council approved the cost of the first phase last May. The $135,000 included the first round of signs and consultant work, and another $100,000 approved in the new two-year budget will help to fund another round of signs in Phase 2. Additional signs will be pursued through private funding in the future.

Gilroy’s Operations division will install most of the new signs, though Dey said that a handful of larger signs will be handled by the city’s streetlight contractor.

“It’s really a full team effort,” he said.

The test sign gave designers a chance to see how the end product would look after production, making sure that colors and other elements transitioned well from their drafts, said Dey.

Those colors will be distinct for the different attractions in the city, including blue for downtown and green for Gilroy Gardens, said Howard.

“They are very important from a tourism perspective,” she said. “There is a real pride issue here—there’s a statement that’s made when you have these signs.”