Navigating the Texas Medical Center is About to Get Easier
“Wayfinding” Plan Completed

The challenge of navigating the ever-growing, always-changing Texas Medical Center will soon be a lot less daunting, thanks to the completion of a Texas Medical Center Wayfinding (“finding your way”) Master Plan. The plan sets forth a detailed strategy for directing patients, visitors and staff through the network of various hospitals, universities, clinics, parking garages, and streets that make up the Texas Medical Center.

The plan will be completed in stages over the next 24 to 36 months, and will include signs easily visible on foot or by car (a few are already in place), a traffic “sorting” system on the edge of the medical center campus that funnels cars and busses onto the appropriate roadways before they enter the main campus, and a series of totem pole-like signs, between 30 and 40 feet tall, that will identify the most-visited destinations. Some signs will be decorated with images of random human faces, to reinforce the message that people are the Texas Medical Center’s main focus.

To help orient visitors before they leave home, the TMC Web site, http://www.tmc.edu, will soon offer options allowing users to locate destinations and print their own “take-along” maps, and a new TMC visitors’ guide with maps and other relevant information is in the works.

The wayfinding plan was drafted by members of the Texas Medical Center’s Wayfinding and Signage Advisory Council, comprised of representatives from various TMC institutions, and fd2s, a strategic design, communications and branding firm.

---

©2006 Texas Medical Center

---

E-Mail: tmcinfo@texmedctr.tmc.edu
URL: http://www.tmc.edu/tmcnews/01_15_03/page_04.html