Your workplace can help tell the story of your brand. Just as the furnishings and décor of someone’s home is likely to reveal something about them, so the same applies to your office or other place of work.
It conveys an image, both outwardly to clients and visitors, but also inward-facing, to employees.
Fine art specialist and gallery owner Sarah Samuels talks about how art can enhance this image.
“In a space where you are doing business with others, where you want to connect with others and engage with them, should you not be making purposeful choices about art for visual impact?”
What Does Your Culture Look Like?
Art is about more than decoration, or even aesthetics. It transmits messages.
“If you visit any business and the walls are hung with anonymous, stock images, they are telling you something by their very blandness. They will make the area feel predictable and less than engaging”
“On the other hand, carefully chosen fine art can do the opposite. It can provide brand leverage because it can convey a clear sense of taste, and provide imagery that is thoughtful and inspiring.”
Choosing the right art will shape a business’s style, and help represent its spirit and character. It can also add a sense of permanence, reinforcing a brand’s dependability in the eyes of its employees, prospects and clients.
Art and Branding Opportunities
“Use art as a branding tool. It can transform even the most uniform of spaces into areas that have a specific personality. Furthermore, culture in the workplace improves workplace culture.”
Fine art provides certain branding opportunities.
“The right art can differentiate your business or organisation in ways that less distinctive decorative displays will not. Fine art conveys a sense of authenticity.”
“Fine art in your business sets up certain expectations in the minds of clients and visitors, and prospective employees, about the kind of work culture you have developed”
Fine art can set the stage for your business brand, and align it to a set of values typified by the environment you have created.
It can build a strong sense of pride in employees, if it is part of an overall office design scheme that helps reinforce their sense of belonging and loyalty to your brand.
“Think about that important first impression you make personally in business, then extend the principle to your workplace. Properly placed art works in the same way. As such, it is a strategic branding decision.”
Choose Art Wisely
Choosing fine art for the workplace is not like choosing normal office décor. Art sets a mood and transmits messages.
“To work with your business brand, the art you choose must be on-brand, it must align with your brand values. At the same time, think about who it should appeal to. Think in terms of how people will relate to it, and derive something of emotional value from it.”
“Art makes people feel differently about themselves and where they are,” concludes Sarah. “This applies more than ever to the world of work as it does to people’s personal lives.”
To discuss your options for improving your business brand with fine art, please call Sarah Samuels on 0785 449 0220, or visit sarahsamuels.co.uk/.
For an accompanying read, please visit Sarah Samuels’ interview, in Business Aspects Magazine, What is the Human Value of Corporate Art?