Merit Award, Identity Yahoo! Headquarters Building Identification Location Sunnyvale, CA Design Firm Square Peg Design, Emeryville, CA Design Team Scott Cuyler (Principal in Charge), Corrine Char, Gia Sung, John Gaccione Fabricator Carlson & Co. Consultants RMW Architecture Client Yahoo! Yahoo did not want to be seen as an adolescent dot.com, so the challenge was to develop a graphics program that captured the irreverent and non-institutional culture of Yahoo! employees and the Yahoo! brand while at the same time positioning Yahoo! as a serious business. The building identification was inspired by Yahoo! and the Internet. Square Peg felt using monuments at the pedestrian level would just add to the institutional qualities they wanted to avoid. Instead, they developed the building identities as a family of objects based on "discovery", the idea that people use Yahoo! as a search engine to discover all ranges of information and services on the Internet. The building objects are abstract and leave room for interpretation by the occupants so that in time they may evolve into names they create. Jury Comments: "The name and logo – Yahoo! – are really difficult to design around. This graphic program manages to be fun and dramatic, while showing necessary restraint." "They did an excellent job of balancing fun and the client's product with the professional persona a business needs."

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