How to design an office for designers?
October 20th, 2008
One question that came up at my session on Leading breakthrough projects at UIE 13 last week was how to design an office for a team of designers.
I’ve been asking around but haven’t found either a well written description of what a manager decided and why, or some research into how to structure spaces for creative teams.
Joel Spolsky’s writeup on the Bionic office comes close, but it’s written about designing an office for programmers, not creative types in general. This is a great start but I’m looking for more.
If you know of other writeups of office redesigns (including how to design a design studio), or research into how to design a workspace for creatives, please leave a comment. Cheers!
Add a Comment or trackback from your own site.
Subscribe via RSS 
It’s a fluffy piece, but here’s a CNN piece on the 21st century office.
There is an interesting chapter in Gordon MacKenzie’s book “Orbiting the Giant Hairball” called Milk Cans Are Not Allowed - He talks about purchasing milk cans for trash, antique roll-top desks for work-spaces and hanging stained glass windows and old doors to define offices (He was the design director at Hallmark.) He was often approached by others to find out where he had received the budget to pull it off. It ends up that his work areas costs almost $700 less than the regular cubicle. The main point is that creatives can get a richer and more supportive environment at less cost.
A few key essential:
1. Lots of space to hang things (stickies, comps, wireframes, charts etc.)
2. Natural light. Not sure this is just for designers but I find confinement stifles creativity.
3. Open floor plan - The space should invite collaboration. It should provide just enough privacy to send email to your wife but not enough for you to play WOW all day.
4. Color printers - A necessity. Designers want to print it and show it. This goes back to #1
5. Shared bookshelf - Designers seem to have more than the average bear when it comes to books. Give them a space to share.
6. Collaboration space - Could just be a round table in the middle of the room but it’s a space to talk and brainstorm.
7. White boards and lots of markers
8. Something funky - this can be really anything as long as it encourages everyone to feel free to bring in their funky crap and let their guard down.
Check out the most contemporary office signs and conference room signs suitable for all office designers.
Just catching up - that Pixar article by Ed Catmull (my review here: http://www.ghostweather.com/blog/2008/10/pixar-on-successful-creative-teams.html) does talk about this a bit, and I remember a good internal Xerox PARC doc by Rich Gold on this topic (a friend of Bill Verplank’s, another sketching maniac) - which I can’t find online, but did find someone quoting him on the philosophical side of it and with his sketches! Here: http://ic-pod.typepad.com/design_at_the_edge/2007/05/fire_juggling_o.html
1. Some interesting examples and a few (somewhat thin) case studies:
http://www.creative-va.com/portfolio.html
2. And then this bit of advice on office design:
http://www.ehousestudio.com/blog/2008/05/30/5-ways-to-create-a-creative-office-space/
Here’s the motherlode of interesting/inspiring photos of creative workspaces:
http://www.thecoolhunter.net/offices