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Scale of work:
Creating a collaborative and comfortable workplace is important to corporations, no matter the size. It’s not only where employees work, it is where the company grows, welcomes guests and invites innovation. Insign takes pride in creating an inviting and functional space for many of its retail customers including its own headquarters. Recently, Insign moved to a new facility and is now treating this location no different than an everyday project.
The new space is an opportunity for Insign to highlight the team’s skills and showcase our work as designers, innovators and fabricators. We tapped into past inspiration from other corporate environment projects with Giant, Walgreens and Gabes in the evolution of our new domain. By taking a look at what we’ve done in the past and trends for the future, we were able to concentrate on what the company needed from a functional standpoint while creating an open collaborative environment. With a focus on innovative design and trends, we started the renovations in mid-2019 and made the move that summer.
Solutions and Concepts
Insign fabricated conference rooms with glass office walls to incorporate a seamless transition from the open concept work area. The graphic designers and printers were very insightful in creating a vinyl wallpaper covered with local historical landmarks and cities representative of our corporate family. These elements offer a flexible, eye-catching area which is a fun and functional common workspace.
In addition to the stationary constructs of the office, we added new technological developments, such as an interactive blueprint table with touch screen and projection capabilities. This customized table will be a pivotal point for our morning huddles. The team is constructing bespoke phone booths that will be accessible whenever they need to take a private call with a client. Additionally, the team incorporated softer lighting in the breakroom which gives off a calming and casual feel. By incorporating custom pieces made by the team members around the space, we are establishing roots within the area and allowing our team to take inspiration from everyday use.
The carpentry team outdid themselves by making the open concept desks for the office staff which increases collaboration with cross-functional teams. As if these innovative concepts weren’t enough, the team fabricated concrete countertops for the President’s office which blend nicely with the polished concrete flooring. The huddle rooms use large conference tables made from reclaimed bowling alley lanes. These elements have a practical purpose and contemporary urban look. The hand-crafted trellis ceiling complements the space with the illusion of more depth and adds to the natural open atmosphere. Pendant lighting hangs from galvanized metal structures turning illuminations into art. Incorporating these elements aid to creating a more functional and spacious feel. Just like Ikea store designer Abbey Stark states, “If you can’t go out, go up.”
Innovations and Strengths
This vision of re-creating our home, required having all-hands-on-deck. The design team, carpenters, project managers and everyone in between helped with ideas and installs.
Connecting our business mission to creating a space for our employees made sense in so many ways. Not only are we working on projects that are creative and inclusive of all departments, these tasks are beneficial to our understanding of the craft and creation process. The tools and elements that were incorporated into our office space will offer insights to implement into other corporate environments, institutions and retail clients. Many companies are adding their signature services and functions to their headquarters. Other organizations, such as Lay-Z-Boy, have been incorporating a comfortable, synergistic edge into their design. Insign Inc. continues to add its local flair and innovative designs to its work environment to further create fresh and functional projects in the future.