Shanghai One East

This was a high-end, mixed use project in central Shanghai, in eastern China. It comprised of 3 Grade A office towers of 107,000 sq.m. and a retail mall of 80,000sq.m. Our scope was for the wayfinding and signage design for all components, including the external areas and the underground car park.

The approved concept was developed from the client’s brand for the project. The brand positioned the project as representing the “centre of the universe”, projecting the qualities of fulfilment, oneness, and unity. The building logo was essentially a circle, and we adopted this as our key icon around which to create the signage forms. And to reflect the idea of all things coming to the centre (of the universe) we conceptually constructed our signs in two halves, which came together at the “O”.

The target audience for this mall was defined as young, energetic, trendy, with a thirst for innovation and creativity; we needed to suggest this but in a tasteful way rather than a playful manner, which resulted in our use of a soft rainbow tint applied in a simple way that blended the elements together.

The original design physically separated the two halves, creating a more dynamic representation of the ‘coming together’ but, after discussions with the client it was decided to combine them into one physical form, to avoid any possible “bad fung shui” – a most important consideration in China – from breaking the logo into two halves.