Parker’s Pals

The series of 20 interpretive signs that FernCreek Creative and I produced last year for Lake Conestee Nature Park have generated commissions from two other other organizations that want the public spaces they watch over to be both fun and educational.

These signs will be erected at Falls Park in downtown Greenville and Runway Park at Greenville Downtown Airport. Nearly 100 signs in all by year’s end.

I’m sure the city planners who come to Greenville to study Falls Park are shocked to discover that it was conjured by Carolina Foothills Garden Club. Most of us associate garden clubs with white gloves and cucumber sandwiches, not urban redevelopment miracles large enough to be identifiable from outer space, but that’s pretty much what Carolina Foothills pulled off  between 1967 and 2004 when the park officially opened.

Our work for them will include both signs for the park and a branding makeover for the club itself.

It’s interesting to note that Lake Conestee is fed by the same Reedy River that flows through Falls Park, because the interpretive signs that we’ll design for Carolina Foothills will continue the narrative that we began downriver.

But the first order of business, unrelated to either of the above, will be Runway Park, for which we’ve established Runway Parker as mascot, shown here. He and Parker’s Pals, male and female aviators representing a cross-section of society, will be photographed in studio as the visual through-line and “voiced” to appeal to flying enthusiasts of all ages.

My challenge as a designer will be to give each of the three parks – Conestee, Runway and Falls – a distinctly different look. The trick will be to accomplish this without compromising the indefinables that got us the jobs in the first place.