Sparrow Hospital has many different types of vehicles in their fleet.
When I began working full time at Central Michigan Graphics in 2012, they’d already began working with Sparrow Hospital to change all graphics on their fleet. Sparrow had recently changed its logo and was in the process of changing everything across their campuses. This was a big undertaking as they had over 50 vehicles in the Lansing area alone. It was very important that any signs, print materials or semi-trucks look consistent with each other.
I took control of the vehicle graphics to our efforts on the project stayed focused to keep things on schedule and make sure each vehicle looked like the last. This proved to be difficult at times as the hospital’s fleet included such a wide variety of vehicles. It’s easy enough to match a Chevy pickup with a Ford SUV, but how do you make a box truck and a golf cart look the same?
The oversized typography was used on Sparrow's shuttlebuses and Security vehicles.
The answer is consistency. Having one person playing the role of project manager helped this tremendously. Working along with Sparrow’s designers and our installers, we developed a set of rules for graphic placement. For example, the vehicle numbers all look as though they “flow” down from the appilar of the front doors. We even went so far as to specify which brand of vinyl could be used to ensure there were no variations in color.
Design and actual application of a cargo van for Sparrow Medical Supply
By the time I started working on the project, a general “look” had already been developed. This allowed us to setup an initial layout of graphics on a template and send it to Sparrow’s designers for any changes before it went into production. I assisted with these layouts and helped cut and print the vinyl for installation. Coordinating the schedule for the installation of so many vehicles was tricky, but between working at Sparrow’s garage and our own our turnaround was typically one day.
It’s not as flashy, but the most important thing I did was to bring some reliability to the project by ensuring that all the tiny details were looked after. Invoices and estimates were submitted to the proper billing departments and emails were returned promptly. Now whether you are looking at Security’s Blazer or the Shuttle bus, they all look like they were cut from the same cloth (or 3M 1080 Forrest Green vinyl in this case).
It’s not as flashy, but the most important thing I did was to bring some reliability to the project by ensuring that all the tiny details were looked after. Invoices and estimates were submitted to the proper billing departments and emails were returned promptly. Now whether you are looking at Security’s Blazer or the Shuttle bus, they all look like they were cut from the same cloth (or 3M 1080 Forrest Green vinyl in this case).
