Finding your way around campus will be a snap come mid-April if project Way Finding is successful at achieving its goal. An estimated 15 to 20 designed signs will be posted around Sacramento State to help students, faculty and community members alike guide themselves through campus.

The weathered green signs with no standout quality and a minimal directory system, which only has three maps on campus, prompted the university to create a more efficient system.

As part of a class required for graduation, graphic design students will create the signs, which will be equipped with colorful layouts.

“My dream was to have a semester where (students) learned how a real job went through a studio,” said Gwen Amos, graphic design program coordinator. The new signs on campus are part of President Alexander Gonzalez’s plan to revamp Sac State and make it easier for everyone to navigate throughout the campus.

The project is headed by John Forrest, assistant graphic design professor; Bill Olmsted, lecturer; and Amos, who will act as art directors of the project but will not participate in the design aspect itself.

Extensive research by students Christopher Lee and Christine Lee, both juniors in graphic design, has given the classes working on the project vast insight into the new signs being created.

The two collaborated to make a mapped-out display of the campus, pin pointed with faults in the current layout of the school’s directory systems.

“Gwen and John advised us and we collected the data,” Christine Lee said about the data collection. Collection of data including Sac State’s current sign dimensions and photos from different vantage points have been rounded up by the two.

“Students are going to look at other signage at other campuses and other locations such as hospitals,” Amos said. “In mid April we’re going to have a big slide presentation.”

Amos said with an expanding campus and an increasing student population these signs will be helpful for all, who admits she finds herself getting lost on campus.

“There’s parts of campus I haven’t been to,” said Forrest who has been teaching here for more than two years.

Both Amos and Forrest were quick to point out new students can find themselves easily lost with signs posted ineffectively throughout campus.

“You could end up in the center of campus and not know which way is up,” Forrest said.

Campus signs are not the only new creations forthcoming; plans for parking signs are in the works, too. Both Amos and Forrest pointed out the school’s green signs that don’t stand out much, making Sac State’s current parking layout flawed.

That’s where surveys from visitors to the campus will come into play, helping fix some of the present problems. These surveys were headed and conducted last semester by Amos.

“When you’re out of your car walking around, do you know where you’re going?” is a question Amos asked regarding the current parking situation. Forrest said visitors to the campus coming to events held at Sac State could be intimidated by the school’s layout.

“We want to make it easy for (visitors) to find out where they are going so they want to come to campus,” Forrest said.