Universal Fibers is a carpet ingredient brand with the highest market share in the industry. To maintain and bolster their competitive edge, they hired our team to develop an authentic brand strategy and compelling messaging. We immersed ourselves in their industry and the minds of their customers, conducting visioning workshops, interviews, and surveys to get to the root of who they are and where they wanted to go.
From there, we developed brand guidelines around their existing logo, including font, color palette, and photography style. We implemented the new style guide and messaging across marketing collateral and strategized the redeveloped of their website, updated to reflect their core values, brand narrative, and thought leadership.
To connect with Universal Fibers’ customers directly, our team designed and coordinated fabrication for multiple award-winning exhibit booths. These experience-driven booths engaged target audiences, garnering opportunities for further name recognition and relevance. Universal Fibers and their customers. To strengthen existing customer relationships, our team designed and executed appreciation events, which included messaging, music, décor, food selections, signature cocktails, and collateral.
Services:
Brand Strategy
Brand Guidelines
Print Collateral
Website Design
Exhibit Booths
Event Design
In collaboration with Gensler
HNI is the parent company of multiple furniture manufacturers including Allsteel, Gunlocke, and HBF. HNI ONE was founded as the strategic sales arm of the company, serving larger accounts with high-touch strategic services. After developing the original name and identity in 2013 to launch the new brand, our team was engaged again in 2016 to align their visual identity with their parent company. We redesigned their logo and established brand guidelines for use by their internal marketing team.
Through additional workshops, the strategy and design teams collaborated on an updated selling proposition and a mobile marketing presentation designed for salespeople to easily share thought leadership materials and product ideas with clients in real time.
To showcase the refreshed brand at NeoCon 2017 and 2018, our team developed a newsletter, print and digital collateral, giveaways, and a virtual reality experience, further establishing their strategic offerings and heightening market name recognition.
Services:
Brand Strategy
Brand Guidelines
Print Collateral
Marketing Presentation
Splash Page Design
Client Giveaways
Virtual Reality Experience
In collaboration with Gensler
Otto Bremer Trust is a private charity that invests in people, places, and opportunities in the Midwest. Amid an organizational transformation, they hired our team to create a new visual identity that would better reflect their mission and heritage. To create their typography, color palette, and logo design, we took inspiration from their geographic area of service, the unique characteristics of the Upper Midwest, and their strong company culture. We then developed Brand Guidelines to inform design and messaging decisions across all platforms, demonstrating this utility through the design of their annual report and other business collateral. Otto Bremer Trust’s rebrand culminated with the decision to renovate their office space to match their new visual identity. Our team designed the reception identity signage and a brand wall, which showcased their history using sophisticated materials that integrated seamlessly into the interior design work.
Services:
Visual Identity
Print Collateral
Environmental Graphic Design
Signage and Wayfinding
In collaboration with Gensler
Our team was selected by the St. Louis Science Center to design a new temporary exhibit celebrating the past, present, and future of digital gaming. Our goal was to create an exhibit that is highly interactive and appealing to the difficult-to-engage tween and teen audience, while encouraging the museum to reimagine the possibilities for future exhibit design. We kicked off the project with an all-day visioning session with museum staff and representatives from their teen volunteer group. The resulting design concept centers around the visitor fully embodying the persona of a gamer. Participants enter the exhibit through a tunnel designed to evoke the feeling of being transported to another world—the world of gaming. Dynamic touchpoints dispersed between seven distinct spaces allow visitors to “level up” as they make their way through the exhibit. Highlights include a life-size Nintendo controller, a ping pong tube, a digital climbing wall, and other interactive components that encourage visitors to experience the history of gaming firsthand. Additionally, we designed the visual identity and merchandise concepts for the exhibit, maintaining continuity between the museum experience and its promotional materials.
Services:
Exhibit Design
Identity Design
In collaboration with Gensler
In anticipation of its 100th anniversary, Navy Pier set forth to reimagine the pier as a public space to both welcome visitors from around the world, as well as renew interest for Chicago residents. This high-profile project has had multiple phases of development to truly transform it into the “People’s Pier.” Our team was hired to add supplemental wayfinding and graphics, design donor signage, and create a digital experience along the Pier.
At the entrance to the Family Pavilion, visitors are greeted with donor-named signage and LED canopy lighting that has an ambient, water-like movement, mimicking the waves that ripple alongside the pier. The antiquated information desk inside the pavilion was replaced with concierge-style tables and large-scale informational display screens, bringing a much-needed digital update and a fresh feeling of hospitality to the space. New signage and standards for sizing and materiality were implemented to maintain a consistent feel for the whole pier. New graphics implemented along the South Arcade add a touch of fun, while also aiding in wayfinding.
Services:
Interior Signage and Wayfinding
Environmental Graphics
Digital Experience Design
In collaboration with Gensler
Tribeca Flashpoint College (now Flashpoint Chicago) is a filmmaking school where students hone their skills in an academic setting while simultaneously participating in hands-on learning opportunities with real clients. Our team was challenged to create a Master Plan for new environmental graphics throughout their downtown high-rise campus, as well as the implementation of the first phase of experiential moments. An interactive experience awaits students, faculty and visitors as soon as they step off the elevator and are greeted by a digital wall. Through projection mapping, students can use their imagination to create ever-changing content including colorful displays and student work. The main stairway up to the office area was brought to life with a color-changing light sequence set to play every hour. Known for its job placement success, the college helps students through strong partnerships with employers throughout the industry. To honor this commitment, we created a lenticular display that uses holograms to hide and reveal the names of their key partnerships as people walk past it. These engaging moments throughout the campus offer students opportunities to be inspired.
Services:
Master Plan
Environmental Graphic Design
Digital Experience Design
In collaboration with Gensler
As a provider of veterinary services, it’s no surprise that Banfield is passionate about pets—they even encourage employees to bring their dogs and cats to work! Our brand team was hired to bring that passion to life in their new headquarters. We worked closely with the interior design team to integrate graphics into the environment—from mission and vision wall visuals, to playful installations like pet hydration stations that add character to the space. The multi-story dog ramp features glass railings treated with silhouettes of animals in motion on one side and playful text on the other. We also designed a signage system with colored zones to help employees and visitors navigate the large headquarters and created customizable signage at department entries to support the sense of community Banfield wanted to nurture.
Services:
Environmental Graphic Design
Signage and Wayfinding
In collaboration with Gensler
The Atlanta BeltLine is a former railway corridor that forms a 22-mile ring around the city of Atlanta. In 1999, Georgia Tech student Ryan Gravel developed his master’s thesis on the concept of repurposing the abandoned rail corridors to transform them into trails and parks. The plan got the attention of influential city leaders determined to make it a reality. After years of planning and design, the first portion of the trail was opened in 2012. When complete, The BeltLine will connect 45 diverse neighborhoods, however, this multi-year redevelopment effort has been highly successful already. The BeltLine provides both reclaimed green space for city dwellers, as well as new transportation options, including walking, biking, and micromobility.
Our team was charged with creating a wayfinding and signage system, along with inventive ideas for placemaking. We developed an all-compassing typologies book that outlines the wayfinding strategy for a wide variety of conditions and designates the sign types recommended for each environment. To reflect the materials of the historic rail corridor, we designed a full sign system using industrial materials like raw steel and blackened steel.
Services:
Exterior Signage and Wayfinding
Placemaking
In collaboration with Perkins+Will
Opened in 2011, Princess Nora University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is the largest women’s university in the world, with over 60,000 students. Built from the ground up, the 27 million SF campus consists of educational buildings, a hospital, housing, and support services—all connected by transit and walking paths. Our team was brought on to develop crucial wayfinding systems including exterior vehicular and pedestrian signage, transit signage, and an interior signage program.
Our interior signage designs were inspired by the local flora characteristic of the Arabian desert and its shrublands. Each flower, fruit, or vegetable was abstracted into a pattern to be used on the signs of the corresponding building. We also developed a full color story and numbering system to help students navigate the vast campus.
Services:
Exterior Signage and Wayfinding
Interior Signage and Wayfinding
Transit Signage
Environmental Graphics
In collaboration with Perkins+Will
After Northwestern Medicine acquired Lake Forest Hospital, the newly merged organizations endeavored to design and build a new hospital from the ground up. The challenge was to bring these two distinct brands and cultures together to make one great hospital—all while delivering a seamless user experience. Our team conducted workshops, interviews, and avatar studies to inform a Brand Experience Master Plan that addressed the merging cultures and set forward our strategies for wayfinding.
To create a well-rounded user experience, we put equal emphasis on high-touch hospitality moments, effective signage for people who prefer to self-guide, and digital technology to support visitors’ needs. The campus and building are both large, complex wayfinding challenges, so we introduced tier diagrams to inform the messaging at each touchpoint. This method keeps the messages on signs brief, so users can move through the space with confidence and avoid getting bogged down with too much information.
Once the strategy was established, we designed the full exterior and interior signage systems and produced all documentation for implementation. The signage design and placement incorporated intuitive wayfinding cues, clear messaging, and sophisticated materials that integrate directly into the building design.
Services:
Brand Master Plan
User Experience Strategy
Exterior Signage and Wayfinding
Interior Signage and Wayfinding
Room Numbering
In collaboration with Gensler
When our team was hired, Advocate Health Care (now Advocate Aurora Health) needed signage standards to implement across their portfolio of 13 hospitals. We started with the design of key entrance signs at each campus, incorporating an illuminated version of their logo to reveal the “light inside”—a nod to the organization’s mission. After a thorough review of the variety of campus types (large, small, downtown, suburban, and rural), we developed an exterior wayfinding strategy, which was complemented with flexible exterior sign types that fit the unique needs of each campus while providing clear wayfinding for patients and visitors. Once the designs were approved, our team provided documentation for each hospital site and coordinated fabrication and installation. We also designed an interior signage system and developed a set of guidelines for ease of implementation over time, ensuring all 13 different hospitals felt part of one brand.
Services:
Exterior Signage and Wayfinding
Interior Signage and Wayfinding
Signage Guidelines
In collaboration with Gensler
Godrej engaged our team to develop the market strategy and execute the design of their new furniture store and lifestyle concept Script. We started with an in-depth review of their target customers, envisioning a store experience tailor-made to resonate with their preferences and behaviors. Working alongside architects and interior designers, our team of strategists and graphic designers developed a perforated metal façade system, which opens and closes to create a dynamic visual experience for Script’s design-savvy audience. Additionally, we staged various lifestyle settings, inviting customers to visualize pieces of furniture in their own home. Strategically designed shelving created separation between each home setting within the showroom, while also providing opportunities for merchandise display.
Services:
Market Research
User Experience Strategy
Exterior Façade Design
Interior Design
Fixture Design
Exterior and Interior Signage
In collaboration with Gensler
