Street art provokes. It inspires and makes you think. We experienced this recently when walking past Peachtree Center in downtown Atlanta and we came across “Symphony” — Atlanta’s largest mural and the latest project from Living Walls, an Atlanta-based nonprofit.

To hear the Living Walls team describe it, their mission is to “promote the power of public art as a social and economic engine, providing an artistic workforce to create healthy, sustainable urban spaces for the city of Atlanta.”

We like them because they work with local and international artists. But we love them for fearlessly confronting social issues and encouraging change.

And how do they go about doing that? The group has facilitated over 100 public murals featured throughout metro Atlanta. They’ve also stretched beyond Atlanta’s borders to bring the Living Walls message to Miami, South Africa, Rome, Barcelona and Moscow.

But ATL is where the heart is for them. And as people infinitely proud of the city we live in, KEYLAY wholeheartedly supports Living Walls’ mission. And we admire what they’ve been able to accomplish from a branding perspective.

In case you didn’t know, KEYLAY founder and principal Kyle Strahl got his start creating murals. His first was as a high school student when the school commissioned him to create a mural for their stadium. He later dabbled in occasional mural projects as he sharpened his design skills in college and on into the start of his career. So murals are in the DNA of KEYLAY.

Sometimes you can find Kyle strolling the neighborhood where our office is located looking for something to inspire the next great design project. It helps that it’s just a 10-minute walk and then BOOM! “Symphony”!

Production on the mural started a week into 2019 and was finished just in time for Super Bowl LIII in February. The mission of the mural? To connect the communities that coexist throughout Atlanta.

Paris-based street artist Hopare chose three faces to depict that message, giving fans in town for the game a new spectacle to take in while they were here — yes, football fans love art, too! Of course the mural remains for all to enjoy way beyond the Super Bowl.

We wondered what went into deciding on those three faces to represent a city. What colors to use? What look should the faces be giving?

We find ourselves in a similar spot with the various projects we work on for our clients. What font to use to convey the emotion the client wants to produce from their customers? What colors to use to make something stand out just right? What type of material to use on our packaging projects to make them tactile, attractive and stand the test of time?

Living Walls often does projects that recognize Atlanta’s unique place in the civil rights movement. Parisian artist, J.R. was commissioned to recreate historic photographs of the movement in the Old Fourth Ward neighborhood to mark the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.

We love the description Creative Loafing gave of how J.R. puts the murals together with the help of his trusted team in 2013.

“J.R. … climbs the frame of a three-story scaffold, maneuvering around its bars and through each landing’s hatch like it’s a jungle gym. JR’s preferred medium is wheatpaste, essentially gluing a paper image to a wall. His team of assistants follows one by one, quickly filling in the levels below him. The 30-foot-by-40-foot black-and-white photograph is unfurled in long strips, slowly revealing a trio of young men carrying signs, one of which says, ‘NO MORE HUNGER.’”

The final product can’t come together without the team working together, which obviously set off bells in our minds when thinking about the team it takes to make our clients’ projects come to life.

It’s projects like J.R.’s that make us love Atlanta even more.

Living Walls hold an annual conference that unites streets artists and scholars from around the world to engage in a discourse about public spaces. There has been some dynamic work produced as a result of the conference over the years.

New York-based artist LNY created a mural on Pryor Street during the 2011 Living Walls Conference that saluted the fallen World Trade Center towers. The two people in the mural are inspired by the volunteer assistants who helped him put the project together, according to WABE.

Also in 2011, Spanish street artist Escif produced a six-story-tall mural showing a red fire extinguisher with the inscription “Emergency Only” at the bottom and yellow stars of the Chinese flag at the top.

Again during the 2011 conference, another Spanish artist named SAM3 painted a 15-story-tall mural depicting someone who appears to be praying. It’s meant to express the sense of hopefulness and a full heart, according to WABE.

Argentinian street artist Franco “Jaz” Fasoli used part of his time in town during the 2013 conference to create this mural on a building on Flat Shoals Avenue.

And during the 2017 conference, New York street artist Tatyana Fazlializadeh created a mural depicting Estrella Sanchez, a local transgender activist and immigrant, holding up the transgender flag.

We go to plenty of conferences around the country as part of our work at KEYLAY, and we always hope to leave a mark in those cities that people remember like the artists at the Living Walls Conference do in Atlanta.

So what’s next for Living Walls? It’s a project tackling something that has reached epidemic proportions in Atlanta.

The city has the fifth-highest number of new cases of HIV infection in the country. So Living Walls wants to create a mural to bring attention to the epidemic, while also spur a dialogue that will hopefully create change — and a reduction in infections.

Living Walls already has funding for the HIV/AIDS mural. They’re now working with the city to figure out a partnership that will make it come to life. Living Walls plans on having community conversations around HIV/AIDS at different spots around the city before debuting the mural this summer.

Are you in the Charlotte area? Living Walls just debuted a new mural project called Ladies to the Front. The four-mural project celebrates and honors the women, sisters, mothers and daughters that help build and sustain communities. Three different groups of students from three different backgrounds brought their voices into the conversation to inspire the content of each mural.

As you can see, Living Walls has successfully branded themselves as an artistic organization committed to enacting social change.

Did you like getting to know Living Walls? Keep an eye out on our website and social media channels for future scoops on other organizations, companies, brands and events in the city that we love that are making waves in design and branding.