Branding is an integral part of the corporate world.  A simple logo seeks to tell potential customers an entire story about a company, including its strengths, values, and future goals.  Beyond the logo, however, companies seek to promote a specific image through the employees that represent the company.  Corporate offices often expect employees to live the company brand and promote a specific attitude and feeling that showcases the company’s image.

Take Apple Computers for example.  While the simple white apple icon exudes a simple and straight-forward design, advertisements and commercials showcase hip, young models that portray the image that choosing a Mac over a PC is the trend to follow.

While branding is widely recognized in logo designs, marketing materials, and advertising, perhaps no area is better at projecting an image than the corporate interior office design.  After all, branding a company image is a process and the process can only be complete when clients get a sense that a company lives out its image in its day-to-day office operations.

If Your Office Could Speak, What Would it Say? Each office portrays an image, even those that aren’t trying to make a statement at all.  From the moment current or potential clients see your office building, they begin formulating their idea about what the office represents.  Office location is the first aspect that needs to be considered.  If the neighborhood of your office is less than desirable, for example, the image of your company will shed the same message.  Downtown offices, on the other hand, exude business and professionalism just by the address alone.   Still, an office can lease a prime building in the hottest part of town and continue to miss the mark because of the image projected inside the front doors.  Once a client enters your office, the individuality of the company is on stage.  This is where design takes over.

Branding Your Office Image from Floor to Ceiling. Corporate interior office design is not something that should be handled by office managers or employees.  You wouldn’t have your receptionist design the next company brochure, would you?  Instead, chances have it that you’d pay a pretty penny for a professional graphic designer to handle this work.  For the same reasons, you should only hire a professional design agency to work on your interior office.  Design professionals know how to transfer your company’s goals from its mission statement to its office walls.  For example, if your company is forward-thinking and prides itself on innovative and creative ideas, then why are all of your employees spending their days behind closed office doors or in between cubicle walls?  A professional office designer will tell you that the image your company must portray is one of freedom and collaboration, which can be achieved with more open space and fewer restricting walls.  Similarly, certified office interior designers will consider everything from color and lighting schemes to decorations that will highlight your office’s values in subtle, yet powerful ways.  From tiny details such as bathroom plants to large office necessities such as the perfect conference room chairs, your office must ensure it is living out its intended image through the right design.

Put Your Money in the Bank. Office design is directly connected to the profitability of the company.  If clients don’t feel comfortable or confident in your office setting, you’ll likely lose their business.  Think about walking into a dirty dentist office.  Would you stay?  Chances are you’ll be out the door in seconds, and clients have the same reaction to unattractive offices in the business world.

Remember, corporate branding is a process that doesn’t end once the logo is recognized all over town.  Corporate interior office design is perhaps the most important way to make that expensive logo stand out and serve you for some time to come.