The visual identity behind community and athletics
Home to the largest indoor skating centre in North America, the Centre de glaces Intact Assurance’s vast athletic space needed a strong yet minimalistic brand to tie it together, one that could act as a new and immediately recognizable symbol for Québec City while conjuring imagery of quick-paced skating across its ice.
With its central feature of a 400-metre ice ring—equipped with two Olympic-sized rinks for short-track speed skating, figure skating and hockey—the new logo of an oval was chosen. Coloured blue to evoke the cold of the winter season and Nordic character of Quebec, it recalls the Centre de glaces Intact Assurance’s ice and striking architectural shape, found in both the structure and the sinuosity of the bright multimedia banner encircling the inside of the building. As speed, in all its forms, was at the heart of this sports complex’s design, the logo’s oval was intersected by an element of movement, represented by two elliptical shapes that speak to the forward momentum of a skater gliding past.
As the Centre de glaces Intact Assurance united a brand-new speed skating track with the hockey rinks of an existing sports complex, its signage strategy required graphical elements grounded in coherent communication, as recognizable for locals as it would be for international visitors. Focused on ensuring fluid and instinctive circulation to the centre’s many service areas, defined spaces were especially highlighted, such as the Robert-Chevalier (the “blue”) and Roland-Couillard (the “red”) rinks. These discreet interventions integrate perfectly into the smooth lines of the architectural concept, while helping orient the users who spend time in unique complex—from Olympic athletes to families and community members.
With these personalized signatures, balanced between a lasting representation of a unique project’s architectural design and its ambitions to be a new central hub for ice sports, the Centre de glaces Intact Assurance’s architectural identity is now found in these subtle yet alluring experiential elements that inspire active use of its facilities.
Learn more about the design of Centre de glaces Intact Assurance here.
