Project Challenge

The San Antonio office of Pearson Education, the world’s largest education company, asked for our assistance in creating a new look and feel to help ensure employees felt welcomed and enjoyed their new office building. Not only was this a new physical environment, but a change in work areas as well. Gone were the old-style cubicles with five foot walls, replaced by a bench-style workstation with employees finding themselves face-to-face with their neighbors. And it wasn’t just fellow employees that were now visible, but the walls in the space around them.

Design Approach

Using the company’s tagline, “Always Learning”, as our inspiration, we researched imagery related to brain activity. Most of what was found was very chart and graph focused as it was relating data from scientific studies. We knew that the employees would not want to look up from their desks and see a plain chart or graph. We needed something that was more relatable and colorful.

The Solution

As the team brainstormed, we began to think of connections – neurons connecting through synapses and the vast numbers — sometimes hundreds of thousands — firing to help us put things together. We filled the space with vivid designs evoking the idea of brain activity and neural networks. We incorporated Pearson’s value statements in a number of the designs. And in a very long hallway, we created a timeline of the History of Education from ancient to modern times as well as a stunning wall highlighting a quote from Nelson Mandela.