Yelp!

Yelp, the online restaurant and business review collective for local consumers, remodeled its San Francisco headquarters while it was raising its profile around the world. We envisioned a design that simultaneously blended the energy and color of a rapidly expanding community of perspectives with the personal experience of where one might be using the platform itself – a cacophony of voices contained within the intimacy of your own living room.

We saw in the eclectic voices that make up Yelp’s community an overarching theme. With sites in over 150 cities– and more on the way– Yelp’s expansive reach suggested a merging of the local and the global. Our graphics simulate the handbills posted in an urban alleyway– the excitement of one message pasted on top of another. The combination of graphic styles in our design– like the combination of viewpoints on Yelp’s website– achieves a surprising result: unity.

Yelp has a very global reach but very regional roots – San Francisco living means biking to work; we embraced this whole-heartedly andplaced bike storage front and center on all building floors. At the main lobby, we recreated a Mission Victorian flat, complete with moulding, stamped tin ceiling and locally sourced vintage furniture. Designed to be both boisterous and friendly, and modern and eclectic, our design reflects not just Yelp’s employees but also their unique community of users.