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Activities Group News: Community Engagement | Housing | Downtown Lakewood | Safety
Downtown Lakewood News
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Studio Graphique: Lakewood Connection
My name is Allison Copeland Levine and I am the Marketing Director for Studio Graphique. I am a Lakewood resident, my husband and I have lived in the city for 5.5 years now and we are raising our 2.5 year old son in Lakewood because we love the city and all that it has to offer. We are homeowners, our son attends the Lakewood Community Care Center and I am thrilled to be a part of this project to help make Lakewood a better place for visitors and residents alike.
My husband Jeremy and I have been members of Lakewood Alive from the very beginning and as the former Secretary for the Committee for a Greener Lakewood, I was invited by Mayor George to attend the first Main Street meeting held at the Beck Center. This is where I met Mary Anne Crampton, who at the time was the president of LakewoodAlive when it was a volunteer organization. A few years later I attended the public streetscape meeting, where City Architecture presented the Detroit Avenue Streetscape Plan, which highlighted the need for a signage and wayfinding plan for Downtown Lakewood as a part of a successful completion of this project. Mary Anne (by then the Executive Director for LCPI and its Main Street Lakewood program) and I reconnected and Studio Graphique kept in touch with her as Main Street was searching for funding to implement these elements of the streetscape plan.
We assisted Mary Anne and Lakewood Alive (formerly LCPI) with a grant proposal for a branding, wayfinding and signage design project. When the funding was awarded, we submitted a full proposal for Design Committee review. While we have extended our discounted non-profit hourly rate to LakewoodAlive, we have not offered any free work for this project, as has been suggested elsewhere.
There have been several public meetings on the overall streetscape project and the signage and wayfinding program, where Lakewood residents voices could be heard and there will be several more throughout the project.
I want to note that the Downtown Lakewood Logo and the Signage and Wayfinding Plan are separate phases of this project. Wayfinding and environmental graphic design is a very refined art and process and our firm is one of only a handful of firms throughout the region that specializes in this work. We are the only firm in Northeast Ohio that specializes in both branding and environmental graphic design. Our experience in developing wayfinding programs is unmatched in the Cleveland area, and includes projects such as Shaker Square, University Circle (to be installed Summer '09), the Eastlake Stadium and Lucas County Arena. The technical, behavioral and political understanding required to put these programs together is normally out of the range of what traditional graphic design firms do.
Our involvement in this project started with my passion for Lakewood, its walkability, its mom-and-pop shops and the desire to give downtown Lakewood a sense of place and to help residents and non-residents alike find what makes our town so great. I feel honored to work with a team of such creative and talented designers that could help Lakewood implement this plan.
I’d like to thank Mary Anne, the Wayfinding Committee and the Board for all the hard work they have put into this project and can’t wait to see the end result for Lakewood.
EDITOR'S NOTE: We want to thank ALLISON for her relentless professionalism and enthusiasm for Lakewood, particularly since she has been undergoing treatment for a rare cancer throughout most of this project. She is an incredible, inspirational woman, and a reflection of the quality of people involved in this effort. If you would like to send Allison words of thanks or encouragement, visit her website: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/allisonlevine. Thank you,Allison, for taking the time to write this post.
posted by LakewoodAlive
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