Spatial experience is a critical element of many brands’ workplace design. Spatial branding is the combination of brand ethos, visual identity, furniture design, interior design, and wall and mural art. With many big corporations, such as Facebook and Google having offices all over the world, establishing spatial branding in a uniform and creative manner is an essential design factor. While there is no proper manner of approach, working with your office space designer is crucial in rendering spatial branding.
Whether pre- or post-covid, the necessity to build a productive workplace remains a primary objective. Compared to past traditional workspaces where offices were solely for working, the switch of direction towards a more hybrid working environment is gaining traction over the last couple of years. Besides maintaining a designated working area in the office, many brands and businesses are offering more spatial features. Studies have shown that a good working environment accounts for 25 per cent of work satisfaction, which in turn leads to increased work performance. Hence, it is crucial to ensure that your employees enjoy their workspace.
The need for spatial branding gained popularity when large corporations, such as Google and Facebook, incorporated that in their offices. Brands and companies all around the world started to adopt such a design mindset in their office interior design, reflecting their core values in their working environment. As much as it is trendy to break down conventional workplaces and build hybrid offices, it is vital to reimburse branding ideologies in interiors.
Design strategies
In an ever-evolving environment, the critical marketing strategy for brands and corporate is experiential design. The brand’s spatial experience needs to reflect its values, ethos, and vision. Hence, the office design goes beyond solely relying on brand logos and colours. Designers have a huge role in ensuring that their designs blend the physical space with the brand’s policies, branding, and vision.
With the mindset that office space needs to provide an equivalent experience to its employees or guests, the design process should begin with understanding what the brand stands for. It would help to conduct interactive sessions with the employees and leadership team to determine what would be beneficial in the office. It is crucial, especially in modern days, to capture the three basic spatial branding approaches: Soul of the company, technology-driven strategies, and people-centric approaches.
There are many aspects to consider and play with in order to incorporate spatial branding into your office design, such as furniture, art, colours, artificial and natural lighting, and the use of biophilia. For example, introducing the brand logo or colours in derivative or subtle forms in patterns or furniture helps to carve out space that aligns with the brand as well as create areas that encourage employees to gather together.
One key example of such effective spatial branding is the Facebook office in California. In line with encouraging openness in sharing and communication, their office space has no distinct barriers or gates to allow their employees and guests the optimal opportunity to move around and explore every corner of the office, just like their Facebook app.
Craftsmanship and artistry
Another aspect of spatial branding that is slowly gaining traction is the use of visual art. In the past, it was trendy to include proverbs or motivational text as visual décor. That, however, has been replaced by visual arts in the form of realistic paintings, murals, graffiti, abstracts, or illustrations. Visual branding is a necessary factor of spatial branding that you need to consider. For example, using varying lighting can help as a design approach to accentuate certain design elements, but it can also be used to showcase branding using varying colours and forms.
In addition to improving user experience through innovative way-finding strategies, spatial branding through the use of craftsmanship and artistry also opens up opportunities to expose people to local artists. Nowadays, many office interior design firms work with companies to get access to artisanal commissioned pieces.
Sustainability in spatial branding
There is a significant push for design sustainability and material used in interior design, architecture, and construction space. Environment-friendly and sustainable factors, such as low energy system design, monitoring protocols, and robust measurements, are design solutions that hold potential for ideal spatial branding. For example, exposing as much workspace as possible to natural light using daylight sensors and light shelves or using recycled certified furnishing and materials.
Conclusion
As more brands and businesses place increasing priority on building their corporate identity through spatial branding, there is also an equal need to connect with the space users – employees, clients, and visitors, on a deeper level, away from traditional corporate office designs.
If you are looking to do a total office interior renovation and would like to focus on spatial branding, then look no further than OSCA Asia. Contact us at https://www.osca.asia/ to find out how we can help you take your workspace to the next level!