Your environment is one of the best tools for attracting new talent, engaging employees, and improving your customer’s experience. A branded environment is essential to gaining national presence, as well as tying employees and consumers together – consider the importance once you realize that one drives the other.
Part of creating an inspiring office design is tapping into the story of your company and bringing it to life, which is where environmental branding comes into play. Here we discuss some environmental branding tips that you can incorporate into your office design.
Choose your location wisely
If you’re securing a new location in the future, think about your brand’s image before signing the lease. Does the actual building in which your team works align with your values, goals, and priorities? Remember, your location is the platform for your brand’s expression, so consider how the layout will influence the way your employees approach their work. Site selection, whether in a centrally located and bustling area or smaller outposts, will play an important role in how your brand is expressed.
Explore environmental graphics
Graphics have become a common sight in some of the most innovative office dwellings for a number of reasons. Environmental graphics can be used to connect people to places by telling stories, or assisting in collaboration or navigation.
One of the benefits of graphics is that they’re easy to update or replace. Graphics used today are more than logos – they can be used to convey valuable information to your customers, or increase productivity in your collaboration process.
Collaboration: Facilitate collaboration with writable wallcoverings, grids, arrows, bullet points, or other custom graphics you can use to organize your brainstorming sessions.
Wayfinding Systems:
Wayfinding can help speed up the onboarding process, make navigation easier for visitors, and overall help orchestrates how people use and move through workspaces of all sizes.
Timelines or storytelling:
You can also use graphics in visual timelines of your company’s history, major milestones, and how it go to where it is today.
Use design themes to tell your story
Your company has own unique story that forms the foundation of your brand – it’s not merely a logo on a wall. It is the reason why your workplace exists and the mission that drives your company.
Capturing the personality and story of your brand in the design helps create your company culture and allows your employees and clients to see the larger picture. Employees today are seeking a deeper meaning and experience in the workplace. Having a connection to the company’s overall mission is crucial for the aspirations and passions of the employees. Further, a brand generally has a consumer or end user it is trying to connect with — a special point of view.
Custom furniture
Employees and customers experience furniture both visually and tactilely, leaving a stronger impression. For this reason, furniture procurement is an important aspect of environmental branding as is knowing where to source them.
We have established relationships with some of the biggest furniture manufacturers in Canada and around the world, making it easier to choose something completely unique. Custom furniture or furniture that expresses your brand’s culture, whether it’s chairs, side tables, ottomans, or the workstations themselves will further define your brand.
Use your design to speak to your customers
You can use your design and branding to speak to your customers and reinforce who your target audience is. Waiting areas and hallways can feature stories from customers, inspirational messages, your past triumphs, company values, or customer service policies. Using design to communicate with your customers is an effective way of keeping your space relevant and impactful.
Fixture and Feature Design
Lighting is so important to workspaces that using diverse types of fixtures is an important part of office design. You should look for fixtures and other hardware that are tailored to your employee and customer experience that also fits the personality of your brand.
Other features include partitions or accent walls that make a statement featuring brick or distressed wood. Even office ceiling lights can be covered with fluorescent light covers that had a custom look.
If you have aspirations to do large-scale branding or conversions projects to your workplace, success requires a high level of strategy. Collaboration is vital to any project’s success. A design-build approach is an ideal method of tackling a rebranding project for workplaces. We can help create a timeline to keep your downtime as low as possible.
