Parking garages can be not-so-compelling experiences, but they're a fact of life for many people. What can you do? HOK Visual Communications (Houston) makes them a little more colorful and fun.
HOK creates a high-energy, richly textured corporate environment for financial client TD Ameritrade. Learn more about this and other Branded Environments projects at Design+Connections at ISA Sign Expo April 24 in Orlando!
TD Ameritrade’s new 11-story headquarters complex consolidates more than 2,000 corporate, technology, and operations employees, located in five offices around Omaha, into one of the country’s largest LEED-Platinum buildings.
Hal Kantner, AIGA, LEED GA, is the director of HOK’s visual communications group. Providing clients with creative programming and design, he brings organizational, marketing and management skills to the business of visual communications.
Hunt Design (Pasadena, Calif.) was a key part of the design team for the $136 million renovation and expansion of the history terminal building and new concourses at the Long Beach Airport. The scope included wayfinding and identification signage for nearly 90,000 square feet of new and renovated public space.
More than “lobby branding,” environmental graphics communicate Eli Lilly’s brand DNA and inspire employees and visitors alike.
When Hal Kantner’s HOK design team met for the first time with their Eli Lilly clients in early 2006, they were given a seemingly straightforward directive: brand the lobby.
The Writing on the Wall. Born in subversion, graffiti has gained the sanction of the fine art and corporate worlds alike. Environmental graphics was the next logical step.
The airport signage for Laredo International Airport was inspired by the modern geometric forms and materials found in its architectural setting. The building's forms were adapted for the signage, creating an interesting and unique sign type palette. The use of local colors from Southwest Texas' Hispanic heritage provides excellent contrast for legibility of wayfinding information. The interior overhead directional signs are cantilevered from the stone columns with three steel tubes and incorporate the angular geometry found throughout the architectural detailing.
Five 65-inch bronze plaques interpret the settlement of Minneapolis Gateway District at five periods in history. The Minnesota Historical Society, HOK Architects, McGough Construction, and the Federal Reserve Bank provided input for the project. Gruppo coordinated all participants, interpreted design intent, scale, treatments and methods for completion. The biggest challenge was to focus all groups on a workable plan, then execute the approved plan by coordinating a disparate group of disciplines.
Nortel Networks, a wireless telecommunications company, asked for an innovative atmosphere in their R&D facility in Calgary. Located in the Canadian Rockies, the environmental graphics combined wireless imagery and wordplay with a site contextual "outdoorism" that dominated the location's culture, especially the younger tech industry workers employed at this campus.
