How do you activate a brand and culture of scientific excellence through a building?

In partnership with the interior architect team, art buyer, and executive leadership, we navigated the construction process and designed brand moments aligned with a strategy for activation, contemplation, and collaboration.

ClientCytokinetics

ExpertiseBrand Strategy · Design · Digital & Innovation · Science Storytelling · User Experience

IndustryBiopharmaceutical · Drug Discovery

LocationOyster Point, South San Francisco

The challenge

A new building is a brand argument, or it is just square footage.

The new Oyster Point building offered opportunities to activate, inspire, and strengthen brand value through strategic touch points.

Cytokinetics partnered with Cognition to design an integrated brand story centered on the lived experience of patients with impaired muscle function, and a celebration of the science.

The approach

We started with the sarcomere, then read the blueprints.

Cognition first worked with Cytokinetics on brand experience through media and interactive exhibits for conference trade show booths, telling the story of the sarcomere and cardiac muscle biology. That expanded into bringing the brand into physical office spaces.

By evaluating blueprints alongside the Cytokinetics mission, vision, and story, we designed a strategy to evoke desired employee behaviors in each space — tapping the history of the company's muscle-biology research and bringing in the founders, the biology, the patients, and the passion.

Activation

Spaces that put the science in front of you the moment you arrive.

Contemplation

Quieter moments built around patients' lived realities.

Collaboration

Shared rooms where the work and the values meet.

The craft

We broke the sarcomere into its structural pieces and gave each floor one.

Sarcomere Myosin Titin Actin Thin filament Thick filament

Each pattern brings color, texture, and a unique voice floor to floor, tying the science through the building while the writing team captured brand voice and educated visitors.

Floor pattern derived from the sarcomere

The build

The narrative went in with the drywall, not after it.

Working with the interior architect, art buyer, and construction management, we implemented the narrative across screens, walls, and other areas — including a Clinical Trial Wall and a Founders Wall.

Environmental graphics installed in the building

Impact

Experience patients' lived realities.

Take pride in the science.

Embody brand values and feel motivated for the work.

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Outcome

From lobby digital walls to a new spin on the periodic table for muscle biology.

The design language complemented the interior architecture and strengthened the brand's future, extending the color system, typography, and photography into bold, clean, motivating work. Across multiple floors the project spans patterns, digital screens, installations, storytelling, and brand-activation spaces. Screens in the lobby, break areas, and conference rooms deliver core values, messages, and patient stories.