
REGENSTRIEF INSTITUTE | ENVIRONMENTAL GRAPHIC DESIGN
Environmental graphic design features, including a dimensional timeline that spans four floors, highlight the rich story of Regenstrief Institute in Indianapolis, Indiana.
The Regenstrief Institute is part of the Indiana University School of Medicine located in Indianapolis, Indiana. Founded by Sam and Myrtie Regenstrief in 1968, Sam’s D&M Corporation in Connersville, Indiana, was responsible for over 30% of the world’s residential dishwashers and made Sam and Myrtie wealthy. Sam’s relentless pursuit of efficiency in his operations fueled his concept and objectives for the institute. Frustrated by the inefficient delivery of health care in eastern Indiana, Sam wanted to apply his manufacturing principals to increase healthcare delivery efficiency for all.
In 2015, plans were made to construct a new Regenstrief Institute facility on the IU campus. We were asked to design, fabricate and install all of the environmental graphic design. Our solution was to bring the Regenstrief Institute’s tagline–“Pathways to Better Health”–to life. Intense, white light represents Sam and Myrtie’s passion for building the “path”. With this passion and generosity, they lighted the way, providing safe environments for revolutionary ideas to be explored and deployed. The lobby features a composition of three, branded elements. Each element works together to set the stage and anchor the balance of graphic installations throughout the building. A rear-illuminated column introduces Sam and Myrtie’s story and reinforces the concept of light as a visual tool and metaphor. Adjacent to the column is one of Sam’s real dishwashers–a physical artifact that explains how this unlikely partnership evolved.
We created a four-story high environmental graphic design feature in the main stairwell that depicts the “pathways to better health”. Created using the light path metaphor, this feature also builds a timeline of the significant accomplishments of the four branches that make up Regenstrief Institute. Each floor is branded, through the use of color and graphic elements, to represent the individual department.
Stainless steel wall murals on each of the upper floors display the Regenstrief logo. These dimensional representations serve as a touchstone back to Sam and Myrtie’s spirit, delineated on the first floor. The wall features, rendered as large halftone dots, read clearly from afar but become abstract up close. Each mural expresses The Regenstrief’s vision and insight–seeing ideas others hadn’t. For example, one the Regenstrief Institute’s first initiatives was to tie all medical records for individuals together electronically–an idea that is just now becoming accepted.