Gary Katz is a Planning and Marketing Innovator at Identity Group in Pittsburgh. 

In addition, Gary Katz is the CEO and Director of Innovation at Cogent Cue. 

A common thread among the team members of IdG is an unwavering passion to help the company succeed.

Anything architectural gets Gary Katz tingly. He loves IG's Point of Purchase retail signs – they are big, 3D, colorful and impactful. It’s fascinating to Gary how low cost materials can simulate such beautiful, high-end looks through architecture. It’s a magic show!

Gary specializes in sign planning design and project organization. He also specializes in marketing, in the respect of really knowing the industry, the clients, and the end-users.

Gary Katz studied architecture at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh. It’s because of his love for architecture that he found himself in the sign design business. Most sign designers are graphic designers, who design for aesthetics first and then functionality. But his approach as an architect is different: for Gary, form follows function. A sign is worthless if it doesn’t communicate.

Of the many things Identity Group manufactures, the one thing that most people are surprised to learn they make is the open/closed signs used by most restaurants.

In Gary's book, the custom architectural wooden signs are some of the coolest things Identity Group makes. They use technology in new ways with just about every order.

Something Gary Katz tells people all the time is to do what you love, because when you love what you do, you’ll figure out how to do it well.

If he's learned anything in business it’s this: you’re never the only one doing what you’re doing – there is always someone doing the same thing or some version of the same thing. So strive to do what you do each day better than you did it the day before. Strive to be the best.

Gary Katz has always been drawn to good architecture – when architecture is good, it helps you with the experience of a building. Likewise, when the architecture of a particular sign stands out, it adds greatly to the experience of the space.

Connect with Gary Katz on LinkedIn.

See his work at Identity Group.