Can your space tell your brand’s story? In this episode, Robin Pasley reveals how design elements like color, texture, and layout can reflect your company’s mission, values, and personality. From multi-unit developments to branded office interiors, learn how strategic design turns abstract brand identity into a powerful, physical experience that builds trust, communicates success, and connects with clients on a deeper level.
www.pasleycommercialinteriors.com/branding
Randi Lynn Johnson: 0:13
Robin, one of the things I've heard you mention before is that you often help your clients by being almost a brand ambassador. If they don't have a brand, you help them discover what it is and then go from there, set them up with graphic designers and all of that. Why is that something so important? Why is that something you put emphasis on in those initial discovery meetings with clients?
Robin Pasley: 0:42
Well, I think it goes to the root of how we approach design, which is from a perspective of a storyteller. Instead of just taking a trend and applying it to a project, or taking a color palette and applying it to a project, or taking a palette a color palette and applying it to a project, we are imagining that every business is unique and there's something great about them, and that's part of our discovery process. When we sit down with a client, you know we've talked before about how interior design is an investment and we talked a lot in that podcast about using our skills of discovery to get to the heart of how their business is going to grow Well, in that same discovery session, we find out all about the owner, the business or the organization. Sometimes this is a bigger organization, but there's always a story. There's always something unique about them and we're trying to suss that out so that we can.
I'll ask a company if they have a brand. Brand collateral is the phrase I'll often use. Do you have any brand collateral you could share with us? And they'll go oh yes, we have a logo and I'm like, oh great, Do you have anything else?
Because a logo is a piece of the brand, but the brand itself is really the narrative of the company, and so, yeah.
Randi Lynn Johnson: 2:10
I think you've heard you say the who you are, what you do, why you do it.
Robin Pasley: 2:15
Yes, right that whole story, absolutely, and so all of that comes into the brand. So if they have some good brand collateral, it's not going to just be a logo, of course that's going to be in there, but there'll be sometimes a narrative, what they're trying to convey to their market. What are we trying to tell our market about ourselves? What do they want to buy into and believe? What are we trying to tell our market about ourselves? What do they want to buy into and believe? What do we want them to know that they can believe about us? To me, that is part of what branding is, and so when we have a better understanding of their brand, then we're going to do a better job of telling that story in the space. We're going to do a better job of telling that story in the space. So then we can go into that collateral and draw off of it what we want to infuse the space with.
Robin Pasley: 3:03
So will the logo be in there? Of course it will be in there somewhere, but sometimes we get to engage more of that brand palette and sometimes there's imagery or line art or iconography that we pull off of that we can engage into the space and create some repetition or some patterns or some textures with it that play into it, and that goes a long way to really round out the space. I mean anybody can take their logo and smack it on the back of a wall behind a reception desk. I mean that's we do it all the time. It's just done to death. So we just try to take a little more creative bent on it and figure out how to pull the brand into the space beyond that. Not that we would not do that or we even treat that like it's not important. Of course you know having that visibility is great.
Randi Lynn Johnson: 4:01
And you do this with colors. I've seen where you'll take. You know their logo colors and it may not be the exact color, but you'll help fit that in a little, or do you do ?
Robin Pasley: 4:14
Oh, we do sometimes, Especially, you know, because you know a great branding agent is using the psychology of color in what they do to convey.
Randi Lynn Johnson: 4:24
You can listen about the psychology of color in one of our other podcasts if you're really interested.
Robin Pasley: 4:30
But they engage that same mentality of what do colors mean, what do they convey and how are we going to tell this story through color as well. So colors, patterns, shapes, I mean all of those pieces come into a brand and then we use those same things to communicate inside of the space. When we're learning about a company and we're doing our design discovery session with them, they brand the company's mission statement, their vision, their values is something we're always drawing on because we believe those are part of their aesthetics as well. So we'll draw off of that to then build their palette, so to speak, their materials, their color palettes, their textures, Whatever we want to say in the space. We're drawing off of those things to tell that story.
Randi Lynn Johnson: 5:32
So the materials that we use are very much linked back to their brand. Displaying mission statements or company milestones is that in good taste Like? Is that something that's helpful?
Robin Pasley: 5:44
Absolutely yes, and I think that's we play into that a lot. Um, I would say it this way yes, there is a very tasteful and artistic way to do that. Um, often it is just put on a wall and poorly framed. We've seen, you know cause, I've seen companies that have been around for, you know, 20, 30 years and, like you know, they got them framed this way for three years and they framed them that way for the next four and then, you know so, over time it starts to look like this kind of hodgepodge mess. Um, so there is a way to do it that is is going to be more aligned with an overall aesthetic, and I I suggest those kinds of things, especially if it's milestones, awards, things like that. There's ways to frame that up and there's always a good place to have that, because you want your clientele or your customers to see that you've been successful.
And there is definitely a place for that. Yeah, builds trust Absolutely. And then conveying who you are and what your values are is really great. Especially, I find this to be great when there's when you're trying to build team culture, you know, among your employees and your workforce, um, to make sure that they understand what they're, why they do what they do every day, absolutely. So we infused some of that into design as well.
Randi Lynn Johnson: 7:04
It's really cool. Is there anything else? I mean furniture, Can furniture be part of a brand?
Robin Pasley: 7:12
A hundred percent.
We worked with a really great project that had an amazing branding agent on it and she was so good at dialing in the storyline that we got to wear when we were doing all of our FFNE our furniture, fixtures and equipment for the project. We would go back to the brand palette and read the narrative again and make sure that the furniture we chose reflected that narrative to a T. I mean we had it down to the throw, pillows and everything. It was a lounge for this multi-unit housing project and it was so fun to work with someone who had already captured the heart of this development so well that we just got to play off of it. So having that great branding agent is huge and it's true we have two or three that are our favorites and we recommend to our our clients because they're so good at what they do.
Randi Lynn Johnson: 8:08
Yeah, that's so fascinating to me, just how everything can be brought in Like, the more I learn about interior design and understanding it as an investment and not a cost, and how even the smallest thing communicates so much to employees, clients, everybody it does. It's fascinating, it makes a huge impact, and so I love that that is your firm's tagline, designed to help your business grow, because it's not just about making it pretty, it's about making it profitable.
*Recorded in our studio at 616 N. Tejon St., Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80903
