The neighborhood of South Park has for long been home to major entertainment venues and destinations, such as the Convention Center, Staples Center, and LA Live. However, many visitors don’t realize that this iconic neighborhood has much more to offer. In order to inspire both residents and visitors to explore this amazing part of the city, we worked with the South Park Business Improvement District and created several utility box wraps. This way, we were able to bring out the appealing vibe of this developing neighborhood.
In order to offer both an attractive and informative experience to any passerby, we decided to use the entire surface of the utility box wraps. This allows us to use plenty of useful information, from pedestrian-scaled directions to nearby destinations to a map of South Park, major landmarks, and transit. We also added icons that represent local businesses by category, including food, drink, shopping centers, fitness centers, and more. This utility box wraps also include one major destination with a map at a vehicular scale.
One of the main design purposes behind these utility box wraps was to minimize the amount of new material used in the project. In order to achieve this, we approached the already existing boxes in a way that allowed us to add purpose to them. Also, we focused on reducing the need for reprinting the wraps, which makes it possible for us to add new businesses by using a sticker. If we needed to update more information, though, we would only need to reprint one side of the box and not the four of them.
Another important feature of these utility box wraps is that they bring an effective and interesting strategy for graffiti abatement. Every neighborhood and city faces a significant challenge when dealing with illegal graffiti and street art. In order to discourage street artists and taggers from vandalizing South Park’s utility boxes, we wanted to add very artistic designs into these wraps. Research has found that graffiti artists and street artists are less likely to paint over a wall or a surface on the street when it is already covered with somebody else’s art.
That’s why we decided to use a different botanical design for each utility box wrap, which was a great way to add to the residential vibe of the South Park neighborhood. Besides, the floral designs also get a bit creative and fun, having different flowers for Flower St, figs on Figueroa, and a Royal Palm outside the classic Palm Restaurant. We wanted to bring into the mix the brand identity of the South Park BID, using dark green as a foundation for the design.
The mix of all these different elements resulted in a quite successful, effective, and appealing utility box wraps project that will accomplish two important goals. For one, it will help residents and visitors discover and explore all that South Park has to offer. It will also work as an efficient graffiti abatement strategy, discouraging taggers and street artists alike from vandalizing these urban structures.
