Focus
Originally established in San Francisco, CA in 2007; Polar Signal now finds its home in the Washington, DC Metropolitan Area, serving a variety of industries including healthcare, finance, education, fine art, science, and more. Specializing in brand identity design and development for print and web, Polar Signal also offers a variety of social media management solutions to keep your business current and accessible. Additional services include custom illustration, mural work, sound development, photography, technical writing, and web animation to provide you with all of the solutions that your business needs to thrive.
Polar Signal originated as the design studio of Ryan Hackett, eventually evolving into a more adaptive and multifaceted visual vehicle. Often working with collaborators on various projects and visual campaigns, the focus is always the same, to offer clean and strategic visual communication through a variety of media.
Ryan Hackett
Founder | Creative Director
Ryan Hackett is a multi-media artist, graphic designer, and web developer based in Washington, DC. He received his B.A. in studio art from the University of Maryland, College Park, and his M.F.A. from San Francisco Art Institute. In between his academic pursuits, he co-founded a Washington D.C.-based artist collective that challenged the commercial constructs of the art world by functioning as curator, artist, and gallery. Upon receiving his MFA in 2007 Hackett founded Polar Signal in San Francisco, CA. Over the years he has provided brand identity design and development for a wide variety of industries including healthcare, finance, education, and fine art to name a few.
Hackett's work has been featured in exhibitions nationally and internationally including the permanent collection of the U.S. Department of State's Arts in Embassies program currently on exhibit in Antananarivo, Madagascar. In 2010 Hackett was awarded the Janet and Walter Sondheim Prize for his exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Past shows include natural synthetics at the Arsenal Gallery in Central Park, NYC, Catalyst at the American University Museum in Washington, DC, and Beyond Human at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA. For more information on his work in the visual arts, please visit www.ryanhackett.com.
Hackett currently serves as an Adjunct Associate Professor at both UMUC and MICA.
Art Dealers Association of Greater Washington
Artline.com
Bella Landscaping & Snow Removal
Bytes Power Smarts, Inc.
Delta Financial Advisors, Inc.
Eleison Pharmaceuticals LLC
I5k Insect Genome Sequencing Initiative
InLightenment, Inc.
Fusion SEO
Jackson Educational Consultants
Jane Haslem Gallery
Jimaworks
Sculptural Constructs
Soho Myriad Art Consulting
United Therapeutics Corporation