A fabricator works on a CoSign sign

Updates
During this month, our signs moved onto fabrication. The fabricators will have nearly two months to order supplies and complete fabrication. We are in the process of scheduling meetings to bring our teams of business owners, sign fabricators, and sign artists together. One of the primary goals of the CoSign project is to foster education about sign making and fabrication. To ensure that we are fulfilling this goal, we want to expose the artist or designer and business owner to the entire fabrication process. We are working to document this process. We have learned that storytelling is an important part of any project, and we want to make sure we are sharing the CoSign story every chance we get.

Recent Wins
We had an interesting situation this month involving an overgrown tree that was blocking the entrance to one business participating in the CoSign project. The tree also blocked pedestrian traffic and was becoming dangerous for individuals navigating the sidewalk. (It also would have blocked any signage CoSign hung for the local business.) CoSign has built strong relationships with many city officials during the past year and because of these relationships we were able to navigate the city systems related to removing the tree and replacing it with a more appropriate tree for the area quickly. We had advocates throughout the city that worked with us to complete this task in a few weeks allowing our project to remain on schedule.

Insight/Provocation
CoSign is a fairly new program, and we are reevaluating our processes to make changes and improvements constantly. We have learned that clear communication is so important. We have some of the same artists and fabricators participating in the process once again. As we want to make changes, we sometimes run into the challenge that people remember how CoSign ran last year and assume it will be the same this year. Sometimes—even with a new program—it is hard to make changes once a precedent has been set. These experiences have caused us to reflect on how difficult it must be to make change in a program that has been established for years.