Reimagining Palafox Street for What’s Next
The Challenge
How do you modernize one of Pensacola’s most iconic streets while keeping businesses visible, visitors informed, and the community engaged throughout construction?
The Approach
We approached The New Palafox as a living system, not a single campaign. The goal was to create a clear, recognizable identity that could flex across digital, physical, and experiential touchpoints while evolving alongside construction.
Rebuilt, reimagined, and ready for what’s next.
Palafox Street has long served as the cultural, commercial, and social spine of downtown Pensacola. As the city planned a major infrastructure and streetscape overhaul, the opportunity extended beyond construction. This project represented a chance to rethink how the street functions, feels, and serves the community for decades to come.
The New Palafox initiative focused on improving accessibility, drainage, walkability, and long-term usability while preserving the character that makes the corridor special. However, projects of this scale come with complexity. Construction impacts daily routines, business visibility, and public perception long before the finished result is visible.
HatchMark Studio partnered with the City of Pensacola to help bridge that gap. Our role was to create clarity during uncertainty, build excitement during disruption, and ensure local businesses remained visible and supported throughout the process. Through branding, digital experiences, advertising, and on-the-ground communication, The New Palafox became more than a construction project. It became a shared story about where downtown Pensacola is headed next.
Discovery
Our partnership with the City of Pensacola did not begin with The New Palafox. Having worked closely with the City on prior initiatives, we entered this project with an established understanding of their goals, processes, and the expectations of the community they serve.
That existing relationship allowed us to move quickly while still being intentional. Early discovery focused on aligning long-term infrastructure goals with short-term communication needs. The City was not only managing a complex construction project, but also navigating public perception, business concerns, and the responsibility to keep residents informed every step of the way.
Through collaborative conversations, we identified key audiences, including local business owners, downtown patrons, residents, and visitors. Each group needed different information, delivered in different ways, but all required clarity, transparency, and consistency.
One insight became clear early on. This project needed a strong, recognizable identity that could unify messaging across departments, platforms, and physical spaces. The New Palafox brand would need to function as both a source of information and a symbol of progress, helping the community understand not just what was happening, but why it mattered.
The Logo
The New Palafox logo was designed to balance history with forward momentum. At its core, the mark features a simple city line made up of familiar buildings and recognizable Palafox landmarks, grounding the project in a place people know and care about.
Flanking the city line are two dates: Established 1738 and Reimagined 2026. Together, they acknowledge Palafox Street’s deep historical roots while clearly signaling progress and reinvestment. This contrast reinforces the idea that the project is not replacing the street’s legacy, but carrying it forward.
Beneath the mark, The New Palafox appears in clear, confident typography, with Pensacola, Florida included below to establish geographic context. The result is a logo that is clean, informative, and instantly recognizable.
Designed for flexibility, the logo performs consistently across digital platforms, advertising, signage, and on-site construction applications. It works at scale, remains legible at a distance, and delivers immediate context, making it an effective anchor for all project communications.
Color Palette
The New Palafox color palette was designed to feel modern, coastal, and civic, while remaining highly functional across a wide range of applications. Every color choice balanced visibility with approachability, ensuring the project felt welcoming rather than disruptive during construction.
Teal and Blue Sky introduce energy and optimism, reflecting Pensacola’s coastal environment and signaling forward progress. Navy and Deep Sea ground the system, adding contrast, credibility, and readability for informational messaging. Black provides clarity and structure, while Live Oak adds a subtle nod to growth, stability, and the natural character of downtown.
Beyond aesthetics, accessibility drove every decision. The palette was engineered to maintain strong contrast for legibility across signage, digital screens, and large-scale outdoor applications. This ensured that updates, directions, and educational content remained easy to read whether viewed on a phone, a billboard, or a construction tarp.
Design Elements
The New Palafox design assets were created to bring clarity, personality, and cohesion to the brand as it showed up across the city. Fun, approachable iconography was developed to help audiences quickly identify business types, destinations, and amenities along Palafox Street. These icons made wayfinding and informational content easier to understand at a glance, especially for visitors navigating the area during construction.
Beyond iconography, visual layouts and pattern work were designed to demonstrate how the brand could come to life across a wide range of activations. These elements added rhythm and consistency, helping signage, social content, digital ads, and on-site materials feel connected rather than fragmented.
A key goal was alignment without duplication. The system was intentionally designed to feel closely tied to the City of Pensacola’s existing brand, reinforcing trust and continuity, while remaining distinct enough to stand on its own as a signature project. This balance allowed The New Palafox to feel official, recognizable, and uniquely its own.
Website
The New Palafox design assets were created to bring clarity, personality, and cohesion to the brand as it showed up across the city. Fun, approachable iconography was developed to help audiences quickly identify business types, destinations, and amenities along Palafox Street. These icons made wayfinding and informational content easier to understand at a glance, especially for visitors navigating the area during construction.
Beyond iconography, visual layouts and pattern work were designed to demonstrate how the brand could come to life across a wide range of activations. These elements added rhythm and consistency, helping signage, social content, digital ads, and on-site materials feel connected rather than fragmented.
A key goal was alignment without duplication. The system was intentionally designed to feel closely tied to the City of Pensacola’s existing brand, reinforcing trust and continuity, while remaining distinct enough to stand on its own as a signature project. This balance allowed The New Palafox to feel official, recognizable, and uniquely its own.
Marking Activations
Marketing activations for The New Palafox were designed to turn disruption into engagement. With construction unfolding in the heart of downtown, every touchpoint became an opportunity to inform, direct, and reassure the community.
We designed the construction fence tarps to do more than cover barriers. Each tarp combined clear wayfinding, project education, and historical touchpoints that helped people understand what was happening and why. Rather than feeling closed off, the corridor remained informative and approachable, guiding pedestrians, supporting nearby businesses, and reinforcing the long-term vision for Palafox Street.
Beyond the construction zone, we developed a full suite of digital ads and billboards to extend awareness citywide. These placements kept The New Palafox top of mind, directed people downtown, and reinforced that Palafox Street remained open and active throughout the project. Messaging focused on clarity, progress, and community support, helping counter assumptions that construction meant inaccessibility.
