Creativity continues apace at Howabout Creative Solutions in Harrogate, and recently my graphic design exploits have seen me tackle some large format designs for Acceleris Marketing Communications (based in Harrogate town centre). I was asked to help make a slightly plain breakout room a little more inspiring and thought provoking for the staff. Somewhere they could take a break, eat their lunch, brainstorm ideas, and was generally more welcoming than the existing room.
A meeting with Peter Davenport resulted a nice free-thinking brief for me, with a free-reign to be creative. We wanted to room to be both engaging and interactive. The approach was to have a mixture of interesting typography, more sympathetic lighting and areas where staff could display thoughts and ideas. We decided a good solution would be a corkboard for pinning, well anything really... nice flyers, postcards, magazine articles, bits of packaging - anything. This was surrounded with appropriate words in the form of a word cloud ('Liked It', 'Blogged It', 'Tweeted It', 'Shared It' etc) and the results looked really effective.
Another wall was given a blackboard paint treatment for the 'old-school' way of communicating ideas. I thought it would make a nice contrast to the modern day method of using computers/email/twitter/blogs to get ideas across. A bit more typography skirting the blackboard wall with a nice branch silhouette image (a nod towards the notion of acorns to great oaks) made for a black/white contrast (with a touch of zingy green too) that worked well.
Appropriate quotes adorned another wall and the window, with a nice wave illustration across one of the large window panes. The wave had an added (and unexpected) bonus of casting a brilliant shadow across the window sill when the sun shone.
Funky ball lights, a floor lamp and some wire frame wall art completed the designs, and I was delighted with the results. Peter sourced some brightly coloured bean-bags, stools and other bits and pieces of furniture and hopefully the transformation is now complete (I haven't yet seen the furniture in situ).
What I have attached here are the visuals we worked from. They are pretty accurate to the finished article, and as soon as I can I will photograph the finished room and post the photos here. It was a great graphic design project to be involved in, really enjoyable and I got a great buzz from it. I think it was because of the fairly instant nature of it - the results came together quickly and I could see the whole concept developing over the course of 24 hours. I love it when a plan comes together!
(Music on the day of installation was provided by an eclectic mix of Jesus and Mary Chain, Beach Boys, Libertines, Chemical Brothers, Gorillaz, Nirvana, Beatles and The Clash). Well, you can't work in total silence can you!?
Visit www.howabout.co.uk
