Challenge The Seneca Park Zoo, located in Rochester, NY, needed to do something about its undersized signage. For years, the outdoor year-round facility was creating one-off plastic laminate signs for the facility’s more than 50 animal paddocks and multiple recycling receptacles. This process caused several challenges, including the laminate not being able to withstand the harsh conditions for more than a few months. It also couldn’t be easily replaced or updated, and didn’t mesh well with the zoo’s environmentally-friendly mission. The Seneca Park Zoo needed a new, time and cost-effective way to create small signage that could survive summer and winter conditions, leaving little to no environmental impact and staying in-line with the zoo’s public image.

As a non-profit, the Seneca Park Zoo Society did not have the funds for a dedicated in-house design staff to produce the small signage. They contracted with an outside company for their larger signs, but to keep costs down, created smaller signs on 8 1/2” x 11” paper which were then laminated. Turnaround time could be several days, so as a result, last-minute announcements such as, “Sea lions are unavailable today due to pool cleaning,” typically were hand written and tacked up at the main gate.

And the plastic lamination? It didn’t hold up in the extreme range of elements this outdoor facility saw year-round, and the signs were contrary to the zoo’s mission of leaving little to no negative environmental impact.

“Those plastic signs definitely didn’t support our goal of being stewards of the environment,” said T.C. Pellett, Marketing and Corporate Relations Director for Seneca Park Zoo.