Designed by its own creative team, Dentsu India’s office gives its employees all the space they need to think out of the box.
The barbed wire stretched conspicuously across the glass at the reception of Dentsu India’s office in Gurgaon isn’t meant to keep visitors out. It’s designed to convey a positive message to customers.
“The barbed wires on the reception glass-door signify or rather demarcate the entry point to the land where dreams are manufactured,” explains Dentsu India’s President Rajesh Aggarwal.
That’s one of several ideas — from the colourful to the plain quirky — that Dentsu India’s creative team came up with as part of a seven-month exercise to decorate the interiors of this 30,000 square foot office last year.
The big idea was to create an environment conducive to creativity and comfort. As Aggarwal points out, most professionals spend the bulk of their waking hours at the office, but work spaces tend to be impersonal. “Apart from the odd painting and a few postcards, few offices have the kind of personal touch we give to doing up our homes. So we got our entire creative team to hand-craft their own environment and make a work space that will inspire them to crack new ideas,” he says.
The result of this carte blanche is a space rich with bold graphic art and mnemonics to encourage people to think differently and cultivate a healthy disregard for all things conventional. Being in the business of selling dreams, Aggarwal says there’s a constant need to be stimulated by one’s environment. Certainly, with pictures of flying dolphins, swimming butterflies or bicycles growing out of the ground, the team has strictly desisted from making the office banal in any way. Written on one of the glass doors, for instance, is a whacky list of things one needs for good innovation, cheekily including “great sex” and “grass” apart from “great skin” or, for that matter, “good sleep”. The boardroom, done up like a futuristic airport lounge, boldly declares “Good ideas arrive here, brands take off.”
Do they? Assistant Creative Director Rohit Dhamija confirms that they do. “While thinking up great brand solutions for clients, creatives often find themselves up against a blank wall. What if this wall could talk to you, encourage you to get back to thinking and even offer a couple of clues about where the next big idea is? That is exactly what our office space provides,” he says.
Being the subsidiary of Japan’s largest advertising agency, the Japanese touch is also conspicuous. All the conference rooms are named after cities in Japan — the biggest one being Tokyo. And the overall theme is true to Japanese minimalism with black and white colour scheme that draws from Dentsu’s head office in Tokyo. The look is complete with wall hangings from Japan, sculptures of Buddha in deep meditation and a painting of Mount Fuji that welcomes you at the reception.
“We also have a conference room which follows the traditional Japanese Tatami room with floor seating,” says Aggarwal. It has an informal air about it and is a place where creatives can relax and ideate.
The room has a Wall of Fame featuring the likes of Archimedes, Che Guvera and Gandhi. “Archimedes got naked for his idea, Che Guvera got diced for his ideas and Gandhi got shot for his ideas,” runs the description below each portrait to explain the length to which each of them went to stick to their ideas.
The variety in space and design provides employees with their favourite zones to work in. Dhamija’s favourite place is one of the meeting rooms called “Osaka” where he and his colleagues spend hours brainstorming. “The decor of the room has become a part of our conversations and thinking processes. This proves how successful our design campaign has been and how it is part of our lives every day,” he says
For Art Director Parul Rangnekar the wallpaper with textured geometrical patterns, cubicles with warm yellow borders and the fresh green and orange workstation panels add vibrancy and zing to her everyday office routine.
Aggarwal says it’s not just employees who feel inspired by the work space. “We have had clients asking us to design their office and make it fun for them to work in,” he says.