Client: Juneau Construction Company
Location: HUB Athens, University of Georgia, Athens, GA
Scope: Design, fabrication & installation
Most buildings introduce themselves once they’re finished. HUB Athens didn’t wait that long. Walk or drive near the University of Georgia right now, and you’ll see it before you see anything else on site: HUB ON CAMPUS, spelled out in bold dimensional letters, mounted on the jib of the tower crane working the job (a mighty impressive crane signage). Not on a wall. Not on a banner staked into a fence line. On the crane itself (the tallest thing on the block, months before the building underneath it has walls to put a sign on).
How the Crane Signage Project Came Together
Juneau Construction Company, the Atlanta-based general contractor building HUB Athens, came to United Signs with a straightforward but unusual ask: get the HUB name in front of people now, not after move-in. Construction on a project like this can run for a year or more, and for most of that time, there’s nothing on site that says who it’s for or what it’s going to be. Juneau wanted that to change.
United Signs took the project from concept to install: design, fabrication, and mounting, all handled in-house. The letters had to clear a different bar than a typical storefront sign. They needed to be light enough to mount safely on active equipment. Also, secure enough to hold up through the vibration and movement of daily crane operation, and still bold enough to read clearly from the ground, sometimes from several blocks out. Weatherproofing a sign is routine. Weatherproofing and movement-proofing, on a piece of machinery that swings a jib around all day, took a different kind of planning.
Why Put a Sign on a Crane
It sounds unconventional because it is. But the logic holds up: a tower crane already sits above everything else on a job site, for the entire length of the build, whether anyone puts a sign on it or not. Skipping the wait for finished walls and using that height instead means the brand starts working from day one of visible construction instead of day one of leasing.
There’s also the simple fact that almost nobody does this. Plenty of developments hang a banner on temporary fencing and call it done. A branded crane is a different kind of statement. It says the project is confident enough to put its name up before there’s anything to hide behind.
What It Means for the Project and for United Signs
For Juneau Construction, the payoff is straightforward: HUB Athens has had a visible presence on campus and in the surrounding community well ahead of its opening, building name recognition with future residents before a single unit is move-in ready.
For United Signs, it’s a crane signage project worth talking about for a different reason. It’s proof that when a client comes with an idea outside the usual playbook (mounting signage on active construction equipment instead of a finished building), the answer doesn’t have to be “that’s not really how signs work.”
Sometimes it just takes the right team willing to figure out how to make it work. The crane won’t be there forever. Eventually it comes down, the building goes up, and HUB Athens gets its permanent signage where signage normally goes. But for now, the name is already up, and it got there first.
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