It’s no secret – we Chattanoogans are pretty proud of our downtown. Often used as the measuring stick of progress since our dark days as the world’s dirtiest city, it stands as a shining beacon of what a city can accomplish with a solid vision and a lot of hard work. But recently the signs of progress are a bit more literal with…well…new signs.
This month launches the rebranding of downtown, beginning with brightly colored banners highlighting each of downtown’s five districts: Bluff View, City Center, North Shore, Riverfront, Southside and University/MLK. In addition, new way-finding signs will be erected which have the district name across the top. And if new signs seem like a small feat, think again.
Jonathan Mansfield (left) and D.J. Trischler“Downtown’s way-finding signs haven’t been replaced in close to 20 years, and we’ve been working on getting new ones up for the past two years,” explains Tiffanie Robinson, program manager with River City Company. “You would think a task like this wouldn’t take much time, but it’s actually an expensive project that has to be privately funded but conducted by the city. We’ve worked with downtown businesses and organizations to fundraise as well as the city to execute them going up.” These signs will help tourists find downtown attractions and retailers, but River City officials hope that they, along with the new banners, will also bolster some hometown pride.
In addition to highlighting the areas of town that make Chattanooga unique, the signs boast something no other banner or billboard in America can – a font specially designed for the city (in fact, you’re looking at it right now-this story is set in Chatype Regular). No other city in the world has designed and implemented its own font from the ground up, and when Chatype was launched earlier this year it garnered international attention. There are only 300 professional typeface designers in the world; two of them happen to live right here in Chattanooga – Robbie de Villiers and Jeremy Dooley.
When brand consultant D.J. Trischler, 27, discovered this, he had to meet them. Two coffee shop meetings later the three men, plus Trischler’s business partner, Jonathan Mansfield, were on their way to undertaking the herculean task of rebranding a city. “The pump was primed; the tracks had been laid for an effort like this,” says Mansfield, 27, writer and account manager for D+J Identity. “Locally and afar there’s been a lot of work done in typeface development and municipal branding and dreaming about what Chattanooga can be, so we really came along and were able to tie the strands together. It’s really about us standing on the shoulders of giants,” he humbly adds.