Thirteen years ago, a frustrated architect and a 3-D whiz-kid got together and created HUSH. Now they’re re-imagining the world, one major company at a time, from Brooklyn Navy Yard.
“We wanted to create events and experiences that people could interact with and go inside of,” says David Schwarz, creative partner at HUSH. “These are permanent interventions to the built environment.”
They’re also programmatic journeys through space for clients like Uber, Facebook, LinkedIn, Nike and Instagram.
“Every one of our clients is a large multi-national global household name,” he says. “They’re moving very quickly and looking for new ways to express what the company does, through retail or brand experiences.”
The firm works in the realm of something called experience design. “It’s terrible nomenclature,” he says. “It sounds like we’re an app developer.”
But they’re not. What they do is sum up what a company stands for, in one bold, three-dimensional statement that communicates instantly. It’s design as it relates to an area of a company’s interests.
“One area is workplace design, like an entry or lobby experience,” he says. “It’s a hero moment when a guest or a worker walks into the space and experiences and understands what the company is about.”
It’s like a corporate identity program on steroids. They create exhibits for a brand, maybe with some retail or pop-up. And they’re used for interaction with audiences all over the world.
“It’s not architecture, though we have architects here,” he says. “We don’t engineer buildings, but we have brand designers within the building and a lot of technology layers to it – there are lighting and art gestures with LEDs and immersive interactive spaces with tunnels you walk through.”
It’s for employees, guests, partners, recruitment and then the media. “In a company headquarters, it’s about the values a company puts into its work, the ones employees use as their north star,” he says. “It’s what the company stands for every day.
Bottom line: It’s about messaging.
“A picture’s worth a thousand words,” he quips.
Not to mention an experience.
For more, go here.
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