Lockdown seemed like the perfect opportunity to carry out some overdue work on bd2 studios, given that there were no visitors or staff to ignore the 'mind the wet paint' signs, in fact there was no need for any signs.
We moved into bd2 studios nearly 15 years ago and it's worked really well as a workplace with an open office for the developers on the first floor of the main building, meeting rooms and admin downstairs, a separate design studio across the car park and more recently the rather too handy addition of Sherrington's our adjacent craft beer bar. Whilst we've developed the spaces over the years, such as adding a mezzanine to the studio and putting in showers for the cycle to work scheme, we haven't really done anything to the main building.
As advocates and implementors of joined-up brand experiences ourselves, we feel it's important that the whole journey with us is commensurate with the quality of the services we deliver. That starts with the perception on arrival and the new back-lit signage, installed by Illumex, which enhances the building and creates that boutique agency feel. Inside, the plate glass sliding doors take visitors through a small lobby with a hint of perfume from our Ecoscent and onto the meeting rooms.
Once visitors have signed in through Proxyclick, there's an informal seating area for a brew or water from a new, bespoke hospitality unit topped by a looped video display. The waiting area is now separated from the meeting room by a new shelving unit, from Shelved, which gives a more open feel than the former solid wall.
We converted the building from residential and we're keen to retain that homely feel and create a relaxed atmosphere that's conducive to open discussion, brainstorming and creative thinking - 'ideation' in fact - which is what it's all about. We've even added a display with the dictionary definition of ideation.
There's also a display of various case studies pulled from over 20 years of our back catalogue from our first ecommerce projects for the likes of Burberry, Yokohama Tyres and American Golf dating back to the nineties and early noughties, onto to recent ecommerce work for Senator, Timco and Uform as well as branding examples.
The focus of the entire space is the huge new touchscreen, which allows us to deliver our workshops with smart whiteboard tools - a giant leap forward from post-it notes. We can bring other media onto the board and link users in from Teams or Zoom as well physical participants, and switch from PC to Mac and various browsers to see any differences online.
Overall we hope we've created a space that is welcoming, reflects the personality of the bd2 brand and is, above all, a space that enables creative thinking.
Ideation. Noun formal.
The process of forming ideas.
Ideation is the creative process of generating, developing and communicating new ideas, where an idea is understood as a basic element of thought that can be either visual, concrete or abstract. Ideation comprises all stages of a thought cycle, from innovation, to development, to actualisation. As such, it is an essential part of the design process. Ideation is the noun form of the verb ideate meaning to form ideas.
Related words and phrases:
Brainstorm
Imagination
Dream
Visualisation
Vision
Blue-sky thinking idiom
Think outside the box idiom
A reach of imagination idiom
Beyond your wildest dreams idiom