Allocco
Recycling
Brand identity and a safety sign system for a working recycling facility, where trucks, forklifts and people share the same yard.
Installed. Logo sign above, address and safety signs at working height.
Most of my work is storefronts that want attention. This site needed two different things at once: a brand mark that reads from across a truck yard, and safety signs that people actually notice while trucks are moving. The facade has to carry both without the two competing.
The building is a grid of brick panels framed by concrete bands. Rather than fight that grid, I placed the sign inside one 17'-4" brick bay, centered between the bands, so it looks like it belongs to the building instead of being stuck on it.
The logo is a 6'-3" LED channel logo with a digitally printed face, which keeps the gradient green arrows and blue globe intact. The "A" is built as a separate channel letter with its own blue return and #2945 trim, so it stands out from the globe in depth, not just in color. "Allocco Recycling" sits below in white channel letters on a brown raceway that disappears against the brick. Lit at night, it's visible from the street and the yard entrance.
Elevation, channel letter install detail, and before and after.
The safety signs follow a different logic: they need to be read, not admired. Everything uses black on safety yellow, the color combination people already read as caution, and it matches the yellow bollards and barriers already on site. Heights are set by who's reading:
- Address sign at 11'-9": above the roll gate line, readable by drivers arriving in cabs and trucks. 540 set large; the street name second.
- Pedestrian crossing at 5'-0": eye level for someone on foot. Two versions: one with the 5 MPH limit for drivers, one with a direction arrow for walkers.
- Facility icon set: 18 pictograms at 4.5" on yellow and black composite panels. Prohibitions, PPE, hazards, facilities, emergency equipment. Icons instead of words, because not everyone on a yard crew reads English first.
Every caution sign carries the small Allocco recycling mark at the bottom. The safety system stays strict on color and layout, but it still reads as part of the same company as the sign above.
Address sign, two caution signs, and the 18-icon facility set with material specs.
The same thinking carries inside. In the stairwell, people are moving fast, often carrying something, and glance at the wall rather than read it. So each landing gets one oversized red floor number painted on the concrete, big enough to catch in peripheral vision mid-flight, with a small "Second Floor" line and an arrow pointing to the exit door.
Red is used only for the numbers and the doors, so the eye connects the floor you're on with the way out. Everything else stays raw concrete and black steel.
Stairwell floor identification, rendering.