WORKSPACE WAYFINDING & ENVIRONMENTAL GRAPHICS
A New Space for a Growing Company
Questrade is Canada’s largest and fastest-growing independent online brokerage. Questrade expanded its footprint into a downtown Toronto location, a 40,000 square-foot fit-out encompassing three interconnected floors joined by a central atrium. Artellix provided a comprehensive wayfinding and environmental graphic design program for a space designed to be as forward-thinking as the online platform.
Mapping Canadian Waterways Across Three Floors
While creating a sense of place within the high-tech environment, the workspace design celebrates Canadian natural beauty with each floor themed after a Canadian waterway: The St. Lawrence River, Hudson’s Bay, and The Great Lakes. Quastrade’s many meeting rooms are named after the Great Lakes, major islands, and communities adjacent to the waterways.
Artellix developed abstract dot patterns that represent a section of a topographic map of each room’s designated waterway, coastlines and islands. The patterns vary in size and are meticulously planned for continuity across adjacent boardrooms, with maps laid out from west to east. These graphics needed to be both beautiful and code compliant, ensuring continuous coverage within the code-specified height range.
Tone on Tone Texture
Dimensional Maps: In an agile workspace where desks and collaboration spaces are shared, it is important to include a general indication of where one is located in relation to the entire space. Artellix moved away from flat, static directories in favour of a fun and modern take on 3D maps. These beautiful installations are designed to hug the building’s columns with a radius that mirrors the curvilinear interior design, integrating seamlessly with the architecture. The maps provide an intuitive and high-touch navigation experience at every floor corner, utilizing tactile textures and varying sheen to represent various spaces.
Feature Wall: On the 4th floor, we designed a striking dimensional graphic that spans a feature wall to signify the market pulse. It serves as a subtle, sophisticated nod to the active stock market candlestick charts, bridging the gap between environmental artistry and Questrade’s core expertise.
Wayfinding for the Workplace
Artellix’s signage strategy was built on the principle of architectural harmony. We developed a system that guides users subtly, without competing with the aesthetic of the workspace. Simple, elegant signage utilizes custom pictograms, contributing to a warm and inviting atmosphere. Signage elements are positioned to act as natural visual anchors, ensuring that key destinations are identifiable from a distance without creating visual clutter.
Artellix also implemented a numbering system coordinated with an intuitive grid-based wayfinding program that demarcates columns with dimensional numbers. This approach ensures that the pathfinding is simple and natural, allowing employees to navigate the three-story expanse with ease and efficiency.
2026 Artellix. All rights reserved. Photography: Greg van Riel.