Moving on up…

March 10, 2010 at 10:56 am
Filed under Branding, Dynamic Environments, Signage, Wayfinding

© Albert Vecerka/Esto

Time moves fast in the newsrooms and offices of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, and the media conglomerate’s new headquarters in midtown Manhattan needed to keep up the pace. Two years after it purchased Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, News Corp. moved out of its World Financial Center headquarters and into new midtown Manhattan offices at 1211 Avenue of the Americas.  Studios Architecture designed the 300,000-sq.-ft. space on five floors to consolidate News Corp.’s online, print, and wire services groups and integrate the latest technology.

Design360 Inc. developed a comprehensive wayfinding and signage system featuring digital media walls, signage, and branded graphics for the public spaces. The challenge, says Design360 Creative Director Jill Ayers, was to “maintain a consistent brand feeling across several types of components, from signage and static displays to digital media.”

To help create a dynamic communications-driven environment, the main corridor on each floor functions as a central gathering point, with links to cafes, socializing areas, and circulation. To unite the floors and serve as a dynamic, content-driven backdrop to the main staircase, two multi-story walls of 20mm LED panels feature ongoing direct feeds from the company’s website, stock ticker in Times Square, imagery from The Wall Street Journal magazine, weather, and current headlines.

© Albert Vecerka/Esto

Other digital elements in the space include graphic templates for digital time clocks and layouts for the editorial group’s Newswires Wall.

Jeffrey Kilmer

The system typeface, Helvetica Neue, was inspired by the Dow Jones logo. Materials and fabrication processes juxtapose references to traditional printing processes with nods to technology.  All workstation, room, and base building signage uses Richlite, a sustainable paper product, and ADA zinc panels emulate inked-magnesium printing plates. Dye-sublimated archival photography from the newsroom’s early days serve as glass screens in the central coffee bar areas. Directional signage and illuminated identification at the main reception areas were produced from custom blued steel with push-through acrylic letters. And as a break from the buzz of the newsroom, the project team collaborated on quiet hallways that showcase Pulitzers and other distinguished awards given to The Wall Street Journal and artwork from each of Barron’s weekly covers.  –P.M.K.

© Albert Vecerka/Esto

Coffee, tea or me?

March 6, 2010 at 9:14 pm
Filed under Branding

For decades after commercial aviation took off in the 1940s, airline stewardesses were the glamorous icons of feminine independence and sophistication. Their fashionable uniforms—designed by the likes of Mary Quant and Emilio Pucci—helped burnish the image, and contributed to the branding of major airlines.

Just for fun, here’s a fashion timeline of stewardess attire through the ages. — P.M.K.

Smells like a rose

February 23, 2010 at 8:34 am
Filed under Branding, Design education

All designers know that engaging the senses is the most powerful way to help users retain information and create memorable experiences. And, as we all know, our sense of smell may be the most powerful memory maker of them all. (Remember Grandma’s apple pie? The smell of perfume during your first trip to a department store?)

So why hasn’t the design world been more aggressive about tapping scent to brand environments, create a sense of place, or even (why not?) guide visitors through complex spaces?

Parsons the New School for Design is tackling the issue with a March 26 seminar on Design as Scent. Designers, scientists, artists, theorists, and fragrance specialists will gather to compare notes on the conception, impact, and potential applications of scent. The overall project, which includes the symposium and a class Parsons’ Jamer Hunt is teaching entitled “Critical Experiments in the Smell of Space,” is the result of a collaboration with MoMA, International Fragrances and Flavors, SEED magazine, and Virtual Beauty. It’s a free event, but requires advanced registration. –P.M.K.

Grey matters

December 21, 2009 at 11:48 am
Filed under Branding, Typography

When your client is a creative services company, the design bar gets raised a bit. And when they move into a new headquarters space in a landmark building formerly occupied by toy companies, the fun factor really kicks in.

No problem for Pentagram partner Paula Scher, who conceived a “house of visual games” when she designed environmental graphics and branding elements for the Grey Group, one of the world’s largest marketing communications firms.

Collaborating with Studios Architecture, Scher and Pentagram designer Drew Freeman worked with the materials already being used in the project, celebrating the personalities of different divisions housed on various floors of the building.  The first-floor lobby features a dramatic logo wall of backlit metal mesh, incorporating logos for the Grey Group and its division G2.

The open, gallery-like spaces of the second floor inspired Scher to create a large-scale installation that is part art, part branding statement: a typographic neon sculpture featuring the Grey Group logo encased in a 35-in. acrylic cube. Surrounded by mirrored walls, the sculpture and its infinite reflections activate the space.

(Photos: Peter Mauss/Esto)

The fun and games even extend to restroom signs. Superscaled male and female icons read as “correct” at the entrance, but then optically “stretch” around the corner and down the hall. — P.M.K.

Where have you gone, Mickey D’s?

November 23, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Filed under Branding, Retail

Or maybe we should say Michel D’s? A McDonald’s in midtown Manhattan has become the first in the U.S. to sport a sleek new European makeover featuring Danish Modern furniture, sophisticated graphics, and free WiFi—all designed to encourage hip, multi-tasking New Yorkers to settle down with their Egg McMuffins and stay awhile.

Designed by French architect Philippe Avanzi, the Chelsea restaurant was designed to “give our customers more of a reason to make McDonald’s a destination,” says McDonald’s spokesperson Danya Proud. The company first hired Avanzi in 2006 to redesign its European stores. But don’t worry, the Golden Arches are still in place. And don’t look for a chainwide transformation: individual franchisees have lots of leeway in how their stores are designed. The Euro look may not be for everyone. (Photos: Associated Press) –P.M.K.

Spreading the stealth

November 6, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Filed under Branding

In July Starbucks opened the first of its “stealth” coffee shops in its hometown of Seattle. The first of a new breed of stores designed to impart more local flavor and less big-brand sameness, it was not branded as a Starbucks at all, but instead is called 15th Avenue E Coffee & Tea. Two other Seattle stores have followed.

Now Starbucks is spreading the stealth worldwide. A new London boutique is designed around the concept of “loft living,” with plenty of light and contemporary furnishings. The store features the logo from Starbucks’ original Seattle store, opened in 1971, but Starbucks’ says it will continue moving its store designs back toward a local coffee shop feel. No doubt this trend is designed to provide a caffeine jolt to Starbucks’ flagging sales and offset a growing backlash against Big Coffee. — P.M.K.

Good Housekeeping on the road

October 26, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Filed under Branding, Exhibit Design

“Human Condition designed and produced a state-of-the-art, museum quality traveling exhibit for Good Housekeeping in celebration of the 125th anniversary of the magazine and the 100th anniversary of the Good Housekeeping Seal. The exhibit will tour cities across the U.S. and offer a multi-sensory replication of the GHRI facility and its seven labs by featuring interactive engagements, multimedia timelines, a kids’ lab, full IKEA kitchen facility-and more-all housed within a first-of-its-kind 28′ x 48′ inflatable dome. The structure’s state-of-the art design reflects the modern environmental values of the GHRI while providing a unique experience to visitors.

The traveling exhibit, themed “The Science Behind the Seal”, launched on September 26, 2009 in Tampa, FL. The tour also includes cities such as Dallas, Atlanta, Minneapolis and Chicago between September 2009 and May 2010. For more information and a tour schedule, visit Good Housekeeping on Tour.” — S.N.

Star(Bar) over Texas

September 21, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Filed under Branding

Scent of a Woman dvdrip In Texas, they like things big and bright. So when it came to building a new party deck at the largest football stadium in the world, Cowboys Stadium, HKS BrandSpace and HillebrandCorey designed at colossal scale. The 17,000-sq.-ft. Dr Pepper StarBar, which opened Sunday in time for the Cowboy’s inaugural home game, is set under 15 aluminum arches that light up when the Cowboys score. The amenities-packed space has seven flat screen TVs, six concession stands, and a custom, hand-made “bubble” chandelier imported from Italy. The bartop features backlit vintage Dr Pepper bottles cast into concrete, along with acrylic ice cube lounges. Fans are hoping the Cowboys’ season can hold a candle to it.  – P.M.K.

Brand new rankings

September 18, 2009 at 7:48 am
Filed under Branding

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Coca Cola is on still on the top of the heap in brand value, and Google, Amazon, and Zara are among the top performers in Interbrand’s annual brand ranking, out today.  Wal*Mart is the top retail brand, again. — P.M.K.

The World of Logorama

September 16, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Filed under Branding

“Tonight at the British Film Institute and the One Dot Zero festival in London, French directing collective H5 will be showing a retrospective of their decade-plus oeuvre of graphic art and film, along with the U.K. premier of Logorama, their first short film. Logorama

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 is 17 minutes of Hollywood blockbuster action, rife with car chases, natural disasters, and hostage-taking, but created entirely out of real world logotypes and brand characters. In it, you’ll see the Michelin Man, the Haribo kid, Bob’s Big Boy, Mr. Pringle and Ronald McDonald, but in some very unfamiliar roles playing the classic movie archetypes of good guys, bad guys and foils.” Click for more. — A.M.