Future State
To promote and support tourism, downtown Benicia exhibits a set of signs featuring Benicia’s unique history that are clean, modern, consistent, accurate, and interesting. These signs would enable a walking tour that promotes shopping and dining. The experience would include high-quality online resources that would be accessible by scanning QR codes.
Current State
There are 23 signposts erected throughout Benicia for historical buildings. Most are along First Street. The sign post themselves seem to be in good shape. There are upper and lower signs on the posts.
The white upper signs seem to be well-made and remain legible. Some cleaning might be needed.
However, most of the yellow signs below are not in good shape.
A few are severely damaged.
Some have been obscured by other items.
Some are missing.
The yellow signs all display the same generic message.
They include a QR Code to a landing page.
This landing page requires the visitor to navigate to the appropriate description.
The content includes some text, a few images, a link to the location on Google Maps and sometimes a link to a website.
Some of the links don’t work.
There is other permanent signage about Benicia history. Some is old.
Some is new.
Some are temporary.
Some exhibits have no explanation.
Plan
- Clean the white upper signs
- Replace the yellow lower signs with new versions that:
- have a consistent and modern look
- are larger
- mount higher
- are more durable
- are site specific
- that display some brief information about the site
- that include a unique QR code and URL to more information.
- Upgrade the unique landing pages
- to a modern, mobile-optimized design
- use existing content
- add more text, images and links
- include other media types like videos, audio, and augmented reality.
- make it easy to navigate to nearby exhibits
- Create a physical and online tour map of these sites.
- Establish a process for managing this content
- budget for new content creation, editorial control, and testing
- ongoing budget for support and maintenance
- usage and performance tracking
- Create consistent educational signage that installs without a post to include at other sites when appropriate.
- Create landing pages for these additional sites.
