When Johns Hopkins Children’s Center moved into its new home in The Charlotte R. Bloomberg Children’s Center building in 2012, patients and families were welcomed by multicolored, fritted glass panels, supersized sculptures of puffer fish and rhinos, and a 22-foot ostrich dangling from the ceiling of the four-story atrium lobby. The intent was to create a distraction from the stress of injury, illness and hospitalization. That playful environment, hospital leaders realized, could reach out into the community too, through the design of the Children’s Center’s pediatric transport ambulances.

“We wanted the community to associate these vehicles with the Children’s Center’s ambience and identity with a design we saw as an extension of our building,” says Bruce Klein, director of pediatric transport.

How could that be achieved? The interior of the building has numerous icons to mimic and choose from, but which ones? Philomena Costabile, assistant nurse manager, noted another challenge: “We serve children from birth to 21, so how do you come up with a design that fits that broad population?”

Klein and Costabile, with their pediatric transport team colleagues and graphic designers Kristen Caudill and Rachel Sweeney, zoomed in on the aquatic icons that patients and parents see when they first enter the Children’s Center. The goal? Put a smile on the faces of people watching the ambulance drive by.

“The ambulance itself has a very serious purpose and is not a symbol of joy, so we decided to use graphics that are more whimsical in nature to soften its role,” says Caudill.

The result for one ambulance is a bubbly underwater panorama of seashells, starfish and submarines. The graphic design for another ambulance incorporates both land and airborne creatures found in the Children’s Center, including a winged cubist cow heading for the moon.

“There’s a sense of optimism in the color and liveliness that already exists in the building,” says Klein, “and the design team successfully continued that.”