Grand Openings & Office Openings

The MINISO store opening used branded red-and-white entrance columns to frame the storefront in the retailer's own palette. Fabletics took a storefront arch, which closes the doorway at the top so the entrance becomes a single photographic composition. Face Foundrie was built as a black-and-white arch, matching the monochrome design language beauty retail already uses in store, and Smart & Final took a red-and-yellow entrance arch built to hold up across a parking-lot approach.

Retail openings are almost always constrained by the center or the street frontage: where a vendor may work, for how long, and what may be attached to what.

The Nissan dealership opening worked at two scales — showroom décor for the room, branded centerpieces in red, white and black for the tables and counters where staff and customers sit together — because a showroom floor is already a designed retail space with the vehicles as its focus.

The Crunch Fitness opening in Gilroy paired an arch with entrance columns in orange and white. A gym opening is a membership drive aimed at people driving past, so the entrance has to read at speed and from the parking area, which pushes the design toward high contrast and simple shapes.

Office openings are internal events. The audience is the people who will work in the building, and the décor has to come down cleanly so the space is usable the next morning. This category includes the Google office opening in Sunnyvale, AppsFlyer in San Francisco, Link1 in Palo Alto, Veza Technologies in the Bay Area, a law firm office opening in San Jose, a corporate office grand opening in Downtown San Francisco and a cultural center opening celebration in San Francisco.

Downtown buildings add a shared lobby, a booked loading dock and a freight elevator other tenants are using; suburban campuses add site access approval. Both are settled before the build is scheduled.