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March 2007

Looking for Signs

Mountain resorts by their very nature are large spaces. Getting people to move around in them is a challenge, and that's where good signage comes in.

Written by Moira McCarthy | 0 comment

Consider it your Hallmark moment with your guests, a way to remind them of who you are, what you mean and how you feel about them. No, we’re not talking about group hugs in the base lodge. It’s signage we mean. When it comes to messaging to guests from start to finish in a way that captures your resort and what it means to them, good signage is an often-overlooked tool.

Take Loon in New Hampshire. As the resort grew over the years, so did parking locations. And buildings. And trails. And as they grew, the resort added signs in a way that, in the end, looked, well, not quite right. As Loon director of skiing operations Ralph Lewis put it, “We had signage, lots of signage, but it was a quagmire of crap.”

Which is a problem many resorts may have. And that translates to confusion, stress and even, for a first time visitor, a complete turn-off. Which is why more and more resorts, like Loon, are taking the time and money to rethink, retool and revamp their entire sign system.


Way Beyond Wayfinding

Because signs have to do more than just tell someone something. They have to tell someone something in a simple clear way, match or blend into the environment they are representing, say something about the resort’s personality and oh yeah, stand out enough to be seen but not shock the eye. And, says expert sign creator Richard “Sparky” Potter, owner of Wood and Wood Sign Systems in Vermont, “The ultimate quest of a sign system is not to piss off the guest. I hate sign pollution, but by gosh, you’d better put a sign where the guest needs to make a decision. A lot of places fail at that.”

Potter has become something of a savant of resort signage, helping places like Loon retool their entire system and places like Moonlight Basin in Montana and The Canyons in Utah create new systems that make sense from the start.

At Loon, the main issue with signs in the past was double edged: they knew they needed more, but the more they put in, the more it seemed to confuse guests and pollute the view. “We have a lot of parking lots and a wide base area,” says Lewis. “Our rental shop and snow sports area (which also houses the childcare center) are in a place that was always difficult to explain to people where it was. You’d explain and they’d head that way and still feel like they were walking away from the resort when they actually were not.”

That led to a lot of customer complaints and in the end, the resort’s decision to invest more than three years and a large sum of money to fix it all.

Today, Loon has a well-coordinated sign system—one that takes into account its surroundings, explains clearly where visitors need to go, and blends with the environment. For example, the rental shop and snow sports center now boast rooftop signage built in a way that catches the eye, gives confidence in direction to the visitor and yet doesn’t look like bling on a rapper.

Customers love it. Says Lewis, “We’ve had some compliments, but what speaks most to the success is what we haven’t had: Those complaints.”


That First Impression

Potter knows from experience that resort managers often look to him for quick fixes for sign issues when, in fact, it’s a process that demands time, thought and even some “expeditions.”

Take the new and award winning signage at Stowe Mountain Resort and Spruce Peak. The signage is elegant yet rustic; lovely yet useful. That, Potter says, came to be for a reason: teamwork.

“Nothing like this happens in a void,” says Potter. He involved the real estate group, the ski area management, resort management and his company. “We sat around a table and pawed our way through a variety of visuals. Everybody there brought something unique and valuable to the table. We had ideas, pictures, even some photos of the surrounding area I had snapped. Then, I literally sketched the entry sign on the back of a napkin and threw it on the table.”

And even then, he said, it wasn’t a slam dunk. “Everyone felt good about what we’d come up with, but we had to be sure,” he says. So the company and the resort folks worked through a few other ideas, just to be sure of what they wanted.

In the end, the entry sign sets the tone the way they all dreamed it would.

“The entry sign’s job is a big one: it needs to make people feel the resort before they even see it,” says Potter.

At Spruce Peak, Potter helped do that by going on what he calls a “safari,” taking the team out into the woods and mountains around Stowe to both feel the tone and find the materials. “We went out there and got stones, trees and as many close to home raw products as we could,” he says. “The idea is a random rustic look—as far from a New York ad agency job as you can get.” But at the same time, he points out, useful. “In the end, functionality is the key. I always want a sign to be beautiful and to represent the area, but if you had to choose between that and functionality, it’s way more important that a sign works than anything else. If it’s aesthetically pleasing and you cannot see it on a foggy day, it’s no good at all.”


Starting Fresh

At Moonlight Basin, one of the nation’s newest resorts, resort managers called Potter in from the start, and he helped them design a system that’s lovely, natural, says something about who they are, and is flexible as they expand.

Moonlight ski patrol director Randy Spence, who helped oversee the signage project there, says bringing in an “outsider” like Wood and Wood was key to their success.

“I think it’s nice bringing in a new person with a fresh perspective,” he says. “He had ideas we had not considered, and we had thoughts they took into mind.”

For Moonlight, the answer came in a massive, rough finished fir tree base with a smaller sign just the right color to stand out in any weather. Topping each sign is a small reproduction of the resort’s Lone Peak signature icon.

While the signage has worked well from the start, Spence says the resort has had to go back each year (now three years into it) and tweak the system. For that, he says, they are thankful for the easy-to-reproduce sign system Wood and Wood created for them. And they are also thankful for their groomers.

“We talk to them a lot about signage,” he says. “I mean, who knows how the mountain works better than a groomer? They can tell us where to put signs to stay out of the way but still be seen well, and where to keep them far enough away so the groomers can lay corduroy.”

Moonlight expects to continue making changes in its signage over the years as the resort grows and the center of gravity shifts to the west. But Spence believes the initial investment in a good signage system and plan will help them do that near seamlessly.


The Long View

Lewis is confident their major investment will pay off for years to come as well. “One of the great things is we now have our own signage shop and a book that Wood and Wood created as a template for what to make,” he says. “So when we need a new sign now, our person goes to the book and gets the colors, the font, the materials, and it all blends. It’s great.”

Potter points out that in the end, the Loon project led the resort to ask Wood and Wood for help in the area’s cafeteria signage and menus. The result? Loon has experienced a surge in profits in those areas. And that makes not just a visitor, but a resort feel good. That’s a Hallmark moment for everyone.