Insights

Why is a design theme a challenge?

Targeting a design theme for your reception area is pretty much like beginning to design a marketing strategy for your business. For an office reception area (like marketing copy) to be more than just beautiful design content, targeting the design theme to the audience is an important first step. While we all think of marketing to get customers attracted to our business, few consider continuing the attraction process once we have them at our workplace.

A targeted design theme helps to internally market you...

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!

I’ve heard it said: the average person lies three times per ten minute conversation. It doesn’t matter if you are a housewife from Duluth, a school teacher from Vermont or a little old lady from Kansas. Find that staggering? Don’t!  It’s true.

Studies show we lie to everyone, 86% to parents, 75% to friends, 69% to spouses and 40% on resumes. Now when it comes to online dating, estimates say an unimaginable 90% of people lie on their profiles. Does that dilute your faith in humanity?

Workplace designs tell the tru...

Tell me if this is something that sounds vaguely familiar…

You want to buy a nice modern reception desk for your business lobby.

You don’t have an exact fix on what it is you want to buy, but you tell yourself, “I’ll know it when I see it.”

You then go from one website to another looking for that perfect reception desk, one that will jump off the screen and say “I’m it, buy me now.”

Unfortunately, the task is more labor intensive than you had ever imagined. You stick with it.

Hooray, you find one that’s really nice, but the price is twic...

ODO is a workplace design discipline dedicated to organizing your business for growth by streamlining processes, employing proper tools and utilizing visual mental aids to formulate internal results. ODO incorporates both technical and creative elements required to improve process, drive performance, and increase a unified awareness for production. There are many aspects to ODO, from the words on your wall to the way office furniture links to the overall process. Sometimes ODO is simply a matter of making sure your workplace is structured in a ...

Have you ever tried using a shoe to hammer a nail into a wall? While on one hand you may get the nail into the wall, on the other hand, you may smash your fingers, damage the wall or possibly mess up your shoe.

Laying out the best plan and tools for the job will certainly yield better results most of the time. 

The Importance of Using the Right Tools

Use the best tools and configuration

When laying out the best tools and configuration for your office reception area, arrange furniture in a manner that best serves the visitor and usage of t...

Juliet: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

In Shakespeare's passionate fictional account of non-typical lovers, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet fall in love with each other. They are disaster-prone from the start as affiliates of two combatant families. Here Juliet states to Romeo that a name is an artificial and meaningless convention, and that she loves the person who is called "Montague", not the Montague name and not the Montague family. Romeo, out of his...

In many business environments, thought, design, color and visual amenities are as far removed from each other as Mercury is from Pluto.

Business owners think office environment a waste

I have heard it said many times by decision-makers: “I would rather direct my time and resources in areas that are going to be profitable as opposed to wasting money in office design.”

From interviews, many CEO’s think in similar ways. At first glance, it certainly seems practical to use company resources in ways that will obviously go directly to bottom lin...

When it comes to your reception area, you can either show you are cut from the same cloth as everyone else, or you show your creative abilities. Either way, it’s a reflection of your brand.

Stupid design ideas inspires communication

The best way to create a really innovative and unique business reception area at your workplace is to have brainstorming sessions whereby everyone can participate by throwing ideas into the proverbial hat, irrespective of whether or not they make good sense. It really doesn’t matter if the idea is off the wall o...

Investing in business is not all good

The belief that investment in business is needed to create value for the brand makes perfect sense to me. There was a time when I thought simply by investing more and more in the business was a surefire way to create more value for the brand. Then I discovered; if “what” I was investing in, was not relevant to “who,” I was investing for (i.e.; customers, employees, etc.) than all my investments would basically have little to no value.

Making important investments matter

It seems like the brands tha...

On August 2, 2011, an article appeared in the Huffington Post describing how one man challenged his co-worker to a bet in which he argued for the value of design and against the belief that design doesn’t mean anything.

Justin Gignac, a designer by trade, took that bet, and set out to prove his associate wrong. Here’s what he did. He decided to design and package New York City garbage. Yes, you heard me correctly. He hand-picked, from the streets of New York, common ordinary trash, i.e., soda cans, candy wrappers, empty packaging -- you name i...