An Office Space Odyssey

Pop quiz. When you walk into work each day, do you feel like:

a) Hugging everyone

b) Ignoring everyone

c) Killing everyone

Chances are, how you answer has a lot to do with the space you work in. If it feels like a sweatshop, you may be more inclined to choose option C. If it feels like a characterless cave, you may opt for option B. But, if it feels inspiring and visually stimulating, you may just choose option A. If you’re into hugging. Which I’m not, by the way. So keep walking, creep.

But wanting to hug everyone, even if your advances are rebutted, is still a good thing. And how your office is designed can have a big impact with your level of hugginess. 

I’ve spent most of my career in New York, where it often seemed that agency office space was designed by bean counters looking to shove more and more bodies into less and less space (I’m still waiting for double-decker seating to show up somewhere). Maybe you’d get lucky and someone would decide to throw up a coat of brightly colored paint to liven up the joint. But that’s about the best you could hope for, typically.

Seems things are a bit different out here in Cali. Because real estate doesn’t quite cost a million dollars per square inch, you can actually put some thought into how things are laid out. 

Deutsch/LA created an awesome work environment at their Playa Vista digs. What I love most about it is how they’ve incorporated props from various commercials into the space. Such a cool way to show agency pride and make the workplace a little more fun (assuming you don’t do ads for hemorrhoid cream).

We’re currently in the process of moving our agency to a much bigger space. So I appreciate the inspiration that Deutsch, among others, provides.

I think we would all be a little more inspired if our offices were more inviting and reflected the personality of the agency. It seems so obvious and yet so many of us work in dreary, soul-sucking environments. 

So next time one of the bean counters comes in with a master plan to cram 50 more employees into 5,000 fewer square feet, tell him to shove it.

And feel free to hand him some of that hemorrhoid cream while you’re at it.