Overview
An illuminated 48-by-48-inch lobby logo for a wealth-management firm at 901 Marquette in downtown Minneapolis: half-inch white acrylic push-through graphics in an aluminum cabinet, lit from within with a halo washing the wall behind it.
01 / The challenge
A financial firm's lobby sign is its handshake — and this one had to hit an exact brand blue supplied as a hex code, land at the right scale on the architect's wall elevation, and light evenly. Hex codes don't translate directly to paint, screens lie about color, and halo lighting is unforgiving: any unevenness in the glow shows.
02 / Our approach
We ran the logo at three sizes against the architectural elevation so the client could pick scale on evidence instead of guesswork, matched the brand blue through our paint system rather than trusting a screen, and fabricated the cabinet with push-through acrylic faces over white LEDs. After install, the halo read hotter in the corners than we wanted — so we prototyped rear diffusing lenses on our bench, tested them against the installed sign in a fifteen-minute site visit, and fitted the finished lens on the next trip. The cabinet never came off the wall, and the whole correction closed across the holidays. That kind of follow-through is the point: the sign is the front door of their brand, and it has to be right.
Scope & features
- 48" × 48" illuminated lobby logo cabinet
- ½" white acrylic push-through face graphics
- ⅛" aluminum face with 1.5" returns
- Halo illumination washing the wall behind the cabinet
- Brand color paint-matched from the hex code, not a screen
- Three scale studies against the architectural elevation
- Post-install lens prototype to perfect the halo
- Coordinated with buildout GC Gardner Builders on entry lighting
- Downtown-tower logistics handled: security lists, insurance certificates, electrician sequencing
Materials
- ⅛" aluminum cabinet
- ½" push-through white acrylic
- White LED modules
- Matthews paint color match
