Huge ATL offers mural opportunities through its office space

Digital agency turns wall into a visual arts canvas for staff and locals

Inspiring collaboration and creativity, Huge Atlanta has commissioned both its team members and outside artists to contribute a mural to the new giant dry-erase wall in its new office space. The full-service digital agency recently moved one floor up in its building on Peachtree Street as Huge’s Art Director James Mabery and Product Designer Michael Zhong were looking for a way to collaborate together on a large scale.

“We waited forever to move upstairs and within two to three weeks, we put the mural on the wall,” Mabery says. “Even before we started with this initiative, I was a huge fan of Michael’s illustration work, so I’ve always wanted to collaborate with him. Initially, we had a wider range of ideas of what we wanted to do, but it came down to something Atlanta-related. Either doing something illustrated or little neighborhoods within Atlanta, like Little Five [Points] to Buckhead and Midtown. We landed on the Huge logo, the big letters, as a base for us to build around.”

Their first collaborative mural was turned into a stop-motion video and shared with the office. Quickly after, Mabery and Zhong saw this as an opportunity to capitalize on their team’s creativity and, later, contribute to the Atlanta arts community.

“Originally, it was really small scale as we just wanted to make some artwork together,” Mabery says. “As we did that, people started to show interest within the office and that’s when they decided to erase it. I thought, why don’t we take this down every two to three weeks and allow other people in the office to do their own stuff on the wall and express themselves?”

It quickly grew into an office movement. Past murals have included developers drawing code and content strategists weaving a visual story around the company’s logo.

With only one static element, the Huge logo, artists and employees alike get to create a mural around it using only dry-erase markers for visitors to enjoy over three weeks. There’s no formal submission method as the team chooses who’s next based on who shows interest or anything that catches their eye on Instagram.

“It’s a great way for people to get to know Huge and we wanted to be more open with the community of Atlanta,” Mabery says. “It’s almost like a meet and greet.”

The latest collaboration to go up was by Ismail Ahmad, a motion media major at Savannah College of Art and Design. His design included skull and heart elements particular to his cartoon-like style surrounding the Huge logo. Up next, the mural will see Huge visual designer Lindsay Appel take over the mural for a food-themed illustration. As far as dream collaborations, the team hopes to bring a graffiti artist on board, as well as more Georgia Tech industrial design students.

“It gives the contributor the confidence as a designer or illustrator, since every time you work on something that large, it forces you to think differently,” Zhong says. “The second thing is that it gives them a platform to show off their artwork.”