Business: Communications and design consulting.

Headquarters: D.L. Clark Building, North Side.

History: Founded in 1980 by Reed Agnew, Don Moyer and Grant Smith, three alumni of the defunct Westinghouse Electric Corp. design center.

Employees: 68.

Visitors to the Pittsburgh Zoo, for instance, probably have read some of the exhibit markers that AMS designed. They’re the ones that provide fun facts, such as how tigers have excellent hearing, have face markings as unique as fingerprints, and, unlike other big cats, enjoy the water.

Taken a stroll through the Cultural District lately? Noticed the colorful lamppost banners identifying the organizations there? Yep. AMS did those, too.

And anyone who’s ever gotten lost in the confusing labyrinth of passageways at the Carnegie Museums in Oakland will appreciate one of AMS’s latest projects.

Designers have just finished a new network of signs aimed at untangling the web and keeping museum visitors on the right path. The signs should be going up in the next few weeks.

AMS’s specialty is tackling complex subjects, making them “visual and accessible,” says Moyer, 52, who founded the company in 1980 with two former Westinghouse Electric Corp. design center colleagues—Reed Agnew, 55, and the now-retired Grant Smith, 66.

As an example, Moyer cites the dozens and dozens of manuals AMS has put together over the years for Steelcase Inc., an office furniture maker in Grand Rapids, Mich.

They include textbook-like guides for interior designers and architects and catalogs that include lessons on how to connect the modular components that have “a billion relationships,” as Moyer puts it.

AMS, which generates about $4.5 million in annual revenue, also focuses on designing Web pages, building data bases that make Web pages interactive and doing image and branding work for corporations.

AMS has helped lots of companies refine their identity, Moyer says.

But when asked to name the biggest branding fiascoes he’s run into, he diplomatically claims they’ve slipped his mind.

Not wanting to let him off the hook completely, a reporter asks about a local company with the funny-sounding name of Superbolt Inc. Curiously, the company makes mostly nuts, not bolts.

Doesn’t that seem like a case of bungled branding?

“They need a little coaching,” Moyer concurs.