tuomas sahramaa

Salesforce.com
Workplace branding, signage, and wayfinding

Role: Design Manager
Gensler Architects, San Francisco, CA, USA

As a young, fast-moving company with an ever-evolving culture, capturing Salesforce’s dynamic spirit in something as permanent as the built environment began as an exciting challenge.

Plus, as one of the largest accounts at the largest Architecture firm in the world, that challenge grew to coordination, communication, quality assurance, and profitability across a sprawling extended internal team, and a web of related vendors and fabricators all around the world.

My team is responsible for Salesforce’s global branding, signage, and wayfinding programs, and my role includes providing managerial leadership and design oversight.

Active local projects:
- Salesforce West (50 Fremont)
- Salesforce East (350 Mission)
- Rincon Center

Other sites:
- Portland, Indianapolis, Chicago, Atlanta, London, Amsterdam, Sydney, and more.

Salesforce.com
Exterior Building ID Signage

Role: Project Manager, Permit Coordinator

I led the effort to put up these signs in downtown San Francisco, through design, construction, and City permitting. There’s lots of rules about it, trust me!

Electronic Arts
Digital Experience Design

Role: Project Manager
Gensler Architects, San Francisco, CA

As a leading digital gaming company, their headquarters refresh in Vancouver needed a distinct digital presence.

Our team was brought in to identify content needs, develop that content, and ultimately bring it to life in the space. Ultimately we developed a series of data visualizations and other content showcases to help show how EA ‘lives to play’.

The effort also included hardware specification, installation coordination, plus programming of a robust remote content management system, later expanded to EA HQ in Redwood Shores, CA, Austin, TX, and beyond.

Alaska Airlines
Branding, signage, and wayfinding

Role: Design Manager
Gensler Architects, San Francisco, CA, USA

This airline, beloved by its passengers, wanted to make its most substantial brand update in 25 years. Their aim was to transform brand perception by establishing consistency across all terminals, from its hub in Seattle, Washington to far-flung gates in Fairbanks, Alaska.

The project also sought to heighten visibility, reduce signage clutter, and create more effective customer wayfinding journeys. As design manager, I was the primary day-to-day client contact, plus lead internal liaison for our design team spread across our San Francisco, Seattle, and Denver offices. I also was responsible for billing, contracts, schedules, and staffing, and coordinated production vendors, prototype fabrication, and user testing.

The new branding program made its debut at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in January, 2016.

AtmosAir
Video Production

Role: Producer/Design Manager/Script Writer
Gensler Architects, San Francisco, CA, USA

Watch the video here: AtmosAir General Video

Since we spend 90% of our lives indoors, AtmosAir wants to
revolutionize how we treat and clean inside air through special air filters that
ionize oxygen molecules to eliminate bad air particles from our offices,
hospitals, stadiums, schools, etc. (you’ll get it once you watch the video).

Building up to a large marketing push, AtmosAir needed special assets to tell their story, so we landed on a pair of animated online videos. We started with a deep dive into how the product worked, and specifically how it helped people. The result is a pair of custom-designed, fully-animated web videos with professional voiceover and music.

Supercell
Corporate Communications

Role: Culture Evangelist, Content Creator, Event Organizer

“The best people make the best games.” Hands down one of the best philosophies on which to build a company. And their success proved it, with top grossing game on the App store like Clash of Clans, HayDay, Boom Beach, and Clash Royale.

I helped craft the story of the Supercell corporate brand, and building recruiting and retention initiatives. Plus pages like the Parent’s Care Guide and Fraud Issues.

I also co-led the concept and identity design for first Games First Helsinki, a free gathering for game developers which is entering its fourth year.

Slush
Startup and Technology Conference

Role: Lead Copywriter; Identity, Social Media & Content Strategist
Website: slush.org

Slush is one of the largest events of its kind, focusing heavily on the regions of Northern Europe and Russia. Having helped plan and execute the event the last three years (2011-2013), this past November the event drew 6,000 attendees, 1,200 companies and $60B worth of venture capital funding.

For 2013 I acted as Lead Copywriter, where for example my headline “Welcome the dark. Embrace the cold.” was featured here in the New York Times. Slush was also covered in major international media like WSJ, BusinessWeek, TheNextWeb and Mashable.

I also took a lead role in developing the brand identity of Slush (writing a “Guiding Principles” document), plus acted as a key coordinator on the Slush social media team, both in strategy development and execution (see “Social Media Guidelines” document). For both days of the event our #slush13 hashtag was a leading trending topic on Twitter in Finland.

Samples of my work for Slush 2013:
- Identity & Brand Guiding Principles
- Social Media & Photography Guidelines
- Blogpost: Instagramming @SlushHQ

Mechanical Engineering 310 (ME310)

Roles: Instructor, Coach, Head of Marketing, Website Developer & Social Media Manager
Website: me310.aalto.fi

After participating in the ME310 course in 2011, I co-led all teaching efforts for the class of 2012/2013 at Aalto, consisting of 22 students divided into six teams from engineering, business and design backgrounds. Project sponsors included Rovio, Audi, UNICEF, WashTec, Carvajal and eFM.

Duties included planning the yearlong course’s curriculum, preparing and delivering lectures, team coaching, leading efforts to coordinate teaching across the global ME310 network of over a dozen leading technological universities, and launching an ME310 program at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland.

I also led development efforts of the course’s website me310.aalto.fi, as well as managing the course’s social media community (link to Facebook page).

Videos of some of our teams’ projects are shown below:

——–

Team Audi: Collaboration between Aalto University (FIN) + Stanford University (USA)

Team Washtec: Collaboration between Aalto University (FIN) + University St. Gallen (SUI)

Team Carvajal: Collaboration between Aalto University (FIN) + Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (COL)

Tupa Maternity Package
Product Development Project

Role: Product Developer & Designer
Award wins: Tähti-idea Finnish Wood Innovation Award. See story here (in Finnish only)
Website: www.tupafinland.com

In Finland, every expectant mother receives a “maternity package” of baby supplies as a free social subsidy.

Tupa is a new, award-winning design for this package, made from a special bendable plywood (at the time yet-to-be-released) called Grada by UPM. Using Grada allows the package to be stronger, more multi-functional and more stylish. Tupa’s functions include: maternity package, rocking crib, table, chairs and a toy/memory box. Three fully-functional prototypes were built altogether.

Our Tupa product made its worldwide debut as a showcase of Grada’s manufacturing capabilities when the material was revealed to the public in 2011. For the course Mechanical Engineering 310 (ME310), our design team consisted of three from Finland and five from Japan.

Partners: Kyoto Institute of Technology (Japan); Stanford University (USA); UPM Kymmene (Sponsor)

Promotional material:
- Product handout
- Poster copywriting (one in series of five)

Video: Tupa in Action:

Video: The Making of Tupa:

ISC/NASCAR Motorsports
Corporate Headquarters Branding, Interior + Exterior

Role: Project Manager

For the North American stockcar racing powerhouse, our Gensler Brand Design team created all of the racing-inspired interior and exterior branding elements that made ISC/NASCAR’s new, Gensler-designed corporate headquarters building in Daytona Beach, FL truly come alive.

The project featured intricate floor number displays inlaid with racing materials (like lug nuts), custom printed exterior sunshades, and an energetic lobby design communicating the thrill of racing.

Sanomatalo “Kulma”
Flagship Store

Role: Designer
Collaboration with agency 358

Sanoma, the largest media conglomerate in Finland, was looking to use its prominent “Sanomatalo” headquarters building in Helsinki to its fullest potential, and to transform it into a unique spatial experience that was active, tangible and truly alive. User co-creation was a main component of the design brief.

Teaming up with creative agency 358 for just two weeks, our team of nine designers from Aalto’s Design Factory led efforts to build the project space in Sanomatalo itself, uncover needs and collect inspirations from users, map the full customer journey, prototype initial concepts, and finally to script the seven core fundamentals for the design and functionality of the space.

The concept was realized when the renamed store “Kulma” was opened in August 2012 in Sanomatalo.

The video below (produced by 358) shows the entire process:

ONE by Transwall
Brand Identity + Print Brochure

Role: Project Manager

For Transwall’s new demountable wall system, also being designed by Gensler, our Brand Design team first developed a product name (ONE by Transwall), logo and identity for the new product.

Next, we created a high quality multi-page print brochure with envelope, featuring lifelike computer generated renderings developed in tandem with specialists in Chicago, IL.

Choice Hotels International
Promotional Advertising Campaigns

Role: Assistant Account Executive

As the agency of record for one of America’s largest hotel chains, we developed all of Choice Hotels’ national print, radio and TV advertising campaigns.

For example, for one campaign (top left) targeting prospective hotel franchisees, a series of print ads appeared in a variety of industry and trade publications.

In another campaign focusing on Choice’s economy brands, users could collect stamps for hotel rewards (typically discounts). The campaign included print work that ran in publications like USA Today, collateral and point-of-purchase elements, plus radio spots featuring Phylicia Rashad of The Cosby Show fame.

For example, we produced TV spots like this one: