Environmental Design

client: Austin Powder

Austin Powder was in big need of sexier facility signage. We tinkered around with using the existing wooden sign poles at the origin factory in Southern Ohio. But they didn’t need new logo signs at just a few locations in the states. They needed new logo signs at every Austin manufacturing plant on planet Earth. I’m not even sure how many there ended up being, but I’m guessing 40+.

While the wooden poles look much cooler with the digital rendering of a frosted plexiglass insert, that wasn’t going to cut it. Every location was different; they didn’t all have wooden sign poles. To show Austin Powder they needed more than a feeble update to some wooden poles, I rendered 2D illustration concepts of sleek, modern monuments with a human silhouette to express the scale these signs should possess.

We worked with a large sign fabricator in the states to ensure the materials used to construct the signs would be universally available around the world. We weren’t shipping these huge things on barges. A random sign shop in Romania had to be able to locally source and construct the same sign for an Austin plant near Bucharest.

They wouldn’t just serve as a logo sign out front, but would often act as directional guides in the parking lots near the road, directing freight trucks, guests, and the even the UPS van delivering the Amazon packages for employees. You know you’ve done it, too; when you didn’t want that high-dollar item sitting on your front porch all day for stoop thieves.