Role: Creative Director & Project Manager
In 2017, the State of Connecticut launched a program to encourage innovation districts in large towns. Stamford, CT, at the time, was the economic engine for the state and home to leading Fortune 500 companies. Part of my work as the Executive Director of the Stamford Partnership was to create an environment for the creative economy. One of the projects I created was the GIG WiFi project, which was one of the key implementation projects of the overall $5 million dollar grant awarded to the City of Stamford.
There were a couple of reasons to bring public WiFi back to life in Stamford. The first was to develop the proof of concept that existing infrastructure could be leveraged to create a mesh network. The second was to identify the key corridors where people gathered, and we could create a network to support an autonomous transportation testing zone.
Stamford was home to the busiest train station outside of Grand Central station in NYC. It was also home to the largest private shuttle service in the northeast. Connecticut has struggled with last-mile transportation issues for decades. While policymakers encourage the use of Metro-North trains, little has been done to eliminate car reliance to get to corporate campuses stretching up to north Stamford. These were the conditions that contributed to how I approached creating the brand for the project.
The logo needed to promote access to the public WiFi, but also convey that it was fast. Instead of branding it, as Stamford WiFi, the play on the sound of swiftly with the letters swifi, was a great fit. The S became an abstract and unique version of the standard WiFi icon and blended with a modern font for the word WiFi. The blue palette was selected to compliment my work on another branding exercise for the City of Stamford.