Our new identity scheme for this famous digital media and design institution strongly features the three Penrose tiles that tessellate almost infinitely across the new building’s skin.
Their new location in Greenwich is without doubt a signature building, and huge contrast to the sleepy low-rise home they left behind in the suburbs. Situated right next to The O2, we were tasked with taking the identity and making it work as interior wayfinding graphics as well.
Building three dimensional versions of the logo in the reception was relatively straightforward. Far more of a challenge was how to get visitors, staff and students to navigate the complex, multi-level space that then followed.
We took an early design decision to use the tile shapes, but rather than use them as small directional arrows we elected to blow them up massively, paint them onto walls then carefully stencil the key information on each floor on top.
Because of the scale of the interior architecture, we wanted to use the shapes at massive sizes so wrapped them around walls and onto ceilings where possible.
The effect of the supergraphics is very powerful, but there was also a good reason for the vast numerals – the building is built in two discrete sections linked by corridors and walkways, and the levels are ‘staggered’ as you look across (a little like a sixties car park where you can see a bit of the floor below and above at any one time).
To avoid any potential confusion, we removed the original level names (1a, 1b, 2a, 2b etc) and replaced them with level numbers 1-10, which created one side of ‘odd’ numbers, and an opposite side of ‘even’.
The teaching spaces within the building are predominantly open-plan so it became equally important to number the open spaces to allow pre-booking to take place. We ‘wrapped’ tiles around concrete columns to achieve this.