Progressive educators recognize that the learning process should not be limited to the classroom and the exchange between teachers and students. In fact, according to a 2013 Gallup State of America’s Schools Report, only 55% of K-12 students are engaged in the traditional learning process.

Introducing experiential graphics into built environments turns the building itself into an educator. Consider a simple example of  labeling a drinking fountain in multiple languages with engaging typography. Not only does this teach one how to say drinking fountain in other languages, it teaches a more subtle value of inclusiveness.

The value of ambient learning is not limited to the education industry. The truth is, every organization is in the business of educating. Businesses educate their employees and customers on their history, their processes, their products. Non-profit organizations educate their volunteers, donors and those they serve. Religious institutions educate their people as well. In fact, historically, churches have done a magnificent job through stained glass and art. Consider that Leonardo DaVinci’s famous “Last Supper” painting was commissioned for the Dominican monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what pictures would make a difference in your building?  Schedule an appointment to explore what ambient learning could do for you.

See just a few of the examples of ambient learning we developed for Delta College below.

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Your building and office space is your chance to influence how people feel in your space and what they think about you and your company. Your name probably already exists on the outside of your building – and it should, to identify you. Do you really want to repeat the same thing inside your front doors? No. Let’s be honest, your guests already know your company name and so do your employees.

Your building should tell your story and your reception area is the first chapter.

Seize the opportunity to say something people don’t know about you, and don’t feel you must use words.  If your clients come in anxious or fearful, give them peace.  If it’s your staff that makes your company so special, show it. If you’re a non profit organization, show a picture that represents your mission. Please, just show or say something other than your company name.

Your goal is to create a conversation starter. No one is going to ask you about your name.

The picture above is a reception area we designed for an engineering firm. Not what you’d expect, right? Well neither is their innovative approach to what they do. We had the wall hand painted by a street artist. It’s a conversation starter with their guests…”Wow, tell me about that!”

Need help with this? Let’s talk.

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Our clients often call on us to help them re-imagine the exterior of their buildings. It could be a dentist that acquired an older practice. It could be a retailer or restaurant that is moving into a spot previously held by a similar business. It could be a manufacturer that wants to increase name and brand recognition. The reasons are nearly endless, but the goal is generally the same: to make people notice and express the brand.

While signage is part of the solution, something more is often needed. While the “more” could involve more expensive architectural changes or cladding, “more” can often be accomplished at a much lower cost with a well-designed exterior paint job. Usually, the client had budgeted to repaint the building anyway.

This is something we practice as we preach!  The above picture is of our new studio.  The incremental cost to paint the 3-color design shown was just 10% more than if we had painted it a single gray color!

Successful design doesn’t have to be expensive.  Schedule an appointment to re-imagine the exterior of your building or explore the Power of Paint.

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Street Level Work Environments

Exterior glass walls at the street level offer lots of natural light, but also expose workers to pedestrian eyes.  Sometimes rooms with exterior windows are exposed to too much sun, creating glare and temperature issues. Street level exterior windows can also be a concern at night when greater internal lighting relative to exterior ambient light allows everything to be visible to the outside world.  If you have team members working late into the evening, this can cause a security concern.  Here we applied a custom-designed window graphic to let the right amount of light in while addressing these concerns.  This solution also increased marketing exposure for the same price.

A Little Privacy, Please

With conference rooms and huddle rooms, our customers want to keep sensitive presentation content from being viewed by people walking by.  Other times they want to protect the identity of their clients or guests.  Blocking out distractions outside the meeting room is also a common request.  Determining the right level of opacity and translucency is unique to each environment.  Here a custom-designed window graphic maintained the nature theme used throughout the interior design.

More Focused Huddles

Huddle rooms and conference rooms are often used for focused collaboration.  A common request is to use custom window graphics to help block out distractions while maintaining a level of openness that allows natural light in and reveals whether or not a huddle room is in use.  Here we accomplished these objectives with a solution designed from three layers of graphic film and in consideration of flooring patterns.

Interior Design Integration

While our customers want to increase the privacy, they don’t want to just cover it all up.  One of our customer’s said it best – “I don’t want a shower curtain!”  Today, we have hundreds of films to get creative with. While frosted films are a popular look, translucent colors and a variety of textures are also available.  Even with frosted films, we have dozens to choose from with varying levels of opacity, coarseness and textures.  Designing the right solution to connect with the rest of your interior is important for creating the greatest impact with your space.

Keeping it Safe!

Finally, the same transparency that makes glass an attractive material to use, can also make it a danger for people to walk into!  Here we created a vertical translucent stripe using a brand color to enhance the interior design and keep people safe!

Ideation Orange is an industry leader in branding spaces using interior design, signs and environmental graphics.  If you would like more information on how your space can help you achieve your goals, contact Ideation Orange in Hazel Park, Michigan.

Photos © 2018 Gene Meadows

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The Power of the Tangible

Physical experiences are powerful and carry weight.  Words have become cheap – people can easily tell you what you want to hear.  When a business takes the time to think about how they want their guests to feel and invests money on a physical experience that expresses their company’s difference, value proposition, and culture, it builds credibility. Vestibules, lobbies, reception desks and waiting areas are all tangible experiences in your facilities that are shaping the first impression.

Who Are You Impressing?

Our clients often have their customers or prospective customers in mind when they come to us to help shape an entrance or threshold experience.  While these guests are important, the experience also influences the perception of current and prospective employees, members, business partners, vendors, and investors.

How Do You Want Your Guests to Feel?

When designing spaces, we ask our customers, “how do you want your guests to feel?”  The answers to this question will vary, reflecting the industry our customer is in and their unique offering in that industry.  Answers include safe, invigorated, comfortable, confident, peaceful, proud and many more.

Different Designs for The Same Feeling

It’s not uncommon for two businesses to want to create the same feeling – e.g. comfort.  The right creative solution for each business, however, will be different based on the nature of that building and the needs of their guests.  For example, what makes a guest comfortable walking into an estate planning law firm to discuss a recent death in the family is quite different than what makes a business owner comfortable walking into the office of a technology consulting firm to talk about how to use technology for a competitive advantage.

If you’d like help shaping the first impression made by your facility – whether a lobby, reception area, waiting room, or vestibule, contact Ideation Orange in Hazel Park, Michigan.  We exist to maximize the impact of built-environments using signage, environmental graphics, and interior design.  We create branded environments.

Photos © 2018 Gene Meadows

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• Energizing the space and making it feel like Logicalis.
• Tastefully integrating digital displays that would help tell the story.
• Bringing more privacy to glass walls of conference rooms and offices.

Stories of successful partnerships told with dimensional letters, custom-designed wall paper with pearl finish and digital displays.

For Logicalis, a technology company, telling their story naturally involved an extensive use of interactive touch screens and digital displays.

According to Ideation’s Michelle Lannoo, “Our goal was for the digital displays and the environment to work together.  It was important for the walls to be part of the story without stealing attention from the content on the displays. Accordingly, we were very thoughtful about the words, textures and patterns surrounding the displays.”

Customer success stories around the globe told with custom-designed wall paper with pique finish, laser cut dimensional letters and interactive displays.

According to Ideation’s Creative Director, Jon Moses, “Once the story was mapped to the wall surfaces and we knew which part of the story needed to be told where we designed a single visual melody that could be used throughout the space to unify the experience.  We achieved this with a custom-designed linear bar pattern that took into consideration existing floor patterns and architectural elements.  We liked that it also had an analytical feel to it, like blocks of data.”

We then designed variations of this visual melody for specific parts of the story or application.  For example, this pattern became an abstract global map on the wall that told the story of the company’s global reach and a multi-layered pattern to increase privacy on glass walls.”

Custom-designed privacy graphic for glass walls from two layers of etched silver and transparent red window films.

Attention was paid to both form and function when it came to increasing the level of privacy on the many glass walls throughout the space.  According to Jon Moses, “We wanted the solution to feel like the rest of the space while offering the right balance between privacy and openness.  The client loved the glass and wanted a little more privacy but not what they called a ‘shower curtain.'” To solve this, Ideation’s Michelle Lannoo brought a variation of the visual melody to glass with two layers of Oracal 8510 etched silver fine-grain film that was applied to both sides of the glass. A more literal touch of the Logicalis brand was applied with a single bar of transparent red film.

Client confidence in the design was achieved prior to production and installation with full-scale prototypes on 4’ clear acrylic panels that could be positioned in various locations throughout the space to test transparency and the effect of lighting.

According to Michelle, “While the effect may appear random, it is anything but.  There is a single base layer of film installed at the width and elevation on all glass walls throughout the office. The second layer of the design extends above and below the base layer.  The base layer brought a calm consistency to the design while also simplifying the installation by establishing a consistent baseline.”

Custom-designed privacy graphic applied to huddle rooms.

The Logicalis team came up with the words to name their huddle rooms.  By bringing the names to the glass design, we increased the energy level, made the space feel like them, and told their story more clearly and visibly than with a traditional wall plaque next to the door.

During the discovery phase of the project, it was learned that some of the clear glass walls had also proven to be a safety concern.  This was solved with a simple stripe of transparent red film.

The values of the company were told on two separate walls.  While digital display told stories about the values in action, the three core values and other brand words were intended to feel more enduring.

Company values expressed in 376 characters in 4 heights and 3 depths from precision laser-cut acrylic, finished to brand colors.

According to Ideation designer, Michelle Lannoo, “In keeping with our visual melody or theme throughout the space, for this wall, I let the words be the linear block pattern we were used elsewhere. In this application the pattern became 3-dimensional.  The 376 letters were produced in 4 different heights and 3 different thicknesses.  To bring attention to the 3 core values, we layered the laser-cut letters and made the base layer their glossy red brand color while using a matte white finish on the first layer.  By using the same matte finish on the letter surfaces as the wall, it feels like the letters are part of the wall, increasing that sense of permanency.”

Photos © 2016 Gene Meadows

The post Logicalis: Making Walls Talk appeared first on Ideation.

We started with the exterior signage. The long L-shaped facade had more to say than just “ISCG,” so we added their slogan “Workplace Inspired.” This helped tell their story on the outside, acting like a headline for the bold interior displays visible through the windows. This also increased signage exposure from more viewing angles. Bright accent colors on exterior walls brought an additional dimension to their facade.

Stepping inside, ISCG’s clean & contemporary lobby called for a totally different design at a more human scale. This elegant, monochromatic solution adds interest and texture through shadow interplay and subtle differences in finishes.

Finally, their meeting/conference room’s colorful furnishings and angled wall required a more playful response. Colorful graphics translate their functional “How We Work” chart into “wall art,” scaled to fit the intimate size of this room.

“Our space conveys our creativity and personality to our clients, and signage is an important element of this message. The Ideation team clearly understood our approach of blending functionality and art with the workplace” Mary Ann Lievois, CEO, ISCG. iscginc.com

Photography by Gene Meadows

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The Process of Creating Vehicle Graphics

All vehicle designs begin with a scaled template of the vehicle.

Having designed Xpert Technologies interior graphics and signage for their office and other marketing communications, we already understood the brand identity and what it stood for. However, each application of the brand is unique and requires fresh design thinking.

Per Ideation Orange designer, Michael Garavaglia, “People often assume that their vehicles should look like a detailed brochure – loaded with imagery and content, but that just results in information overload at 35-75 miles an hour. What mattered most, in this case, was expressing a company value – speed in response, and tying it to the brand name in the most noticeable way.” This was best accomplished with a single-color solution, using Xpert’s bold red on a white vehicle.

Expert installation of graphics for Xpert Technologies!

A Branded Environment Is Not Just Inside the Building

Prior to this vehicle design project, Ideation has been hard at work creating a branded space inside the Xpert offices. However, the vehicle graphics allowed us to move that branded space to a new extension of their business. Check this out below.

Ideation designed and produced reception signage while providing consultation on interior color palettes and space configuration.

The design and production of this portable exhibit display brought the Xpert message to tradeshows.

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