For Mirabeau/ Cognizant I have created various murals for the conference and collaboration spaces in their offices. As part of the new offices I had the delight to collaborate with the founders of Mirabeau and the directors of Cognizant to name and decorate their new office in the Kauwgomballenfabriek (a former chewing gum factory). For their entire community I created a coherent and inspirational theme, complete with backstory, strategy, visualization and murals.
Question: create a visual style, a naming convention and visual products like: signage, murals, directions, strategy.
Task: organize sessions with the founders of Mirabeau to create a naming convention based on the heroes of the founders and the design and technology driven community. Based on the convention, create a list of names, create a visual style and execute the production of murals and signage.
Action: I organized interviews, workshops to produce the naming convention and some ‘hero’s’. When the founders agreed I created eight murals, and signage in various materials as well as a follow up for new spaces a few years later.
Result: a coherently named an decorated series of spaces for Mirabeau and Cognizant. A series of duotone murals for each space and signage with unique story and illystration for each space.
Names and milestones of aspiration and inspiration
The founders choose ‘heroes’ as the naming convention theme. The founders really like the idea to meet in places called after people and their products they looked up to. We choose to name the spaces to their specific milestone product, or effect. The list goes as follows
- Macintosh – named after the work of Steve Jobs
- Lovelace – after daughter of Lord Byron: Lady Ada Lovelace, the inventor of the algorithm
- Mandelbrot – named after the infinite and recursive mathematical visualizations by Benoit Mandelbrot
- Codebreaker – after the mathematical code breaking work in the second world war of Alan Turing
- Buckyball – named after both the football shaped carbon element ‘Buckminsterfullerene’, and their inspiration architect Richard Buckminster Fuller who created a similar shaped geodesic dome
- Magnavox – after the contribution of Nolan Bushnell who saw and helped the potential of using computers to create games with Magnavox as one of the most inspirational works.
- Meshmatics – named after one of the integrate works of Rick Tegelaar
- MacGyver – names after the fictional character that could ‘invent’ his way out of predicaments with some tape and a Swiss Army Knife: Angus MacGyver
- Doppler – named after the effect of moving sound heard from one perspective.
Signage
For each of the spaces I had custom illustrations designed and provided a nice discriptive text, so that people would know where the name of the space came from.
