Reviving a workplace joins design and internal comms. Jason Panudy explains Orange's new look

"No business should think of communication as something that exists separately from design"

In marketing and the creative industries, the phrase “the medium is the message” is commonplace. However, internal communicators should also treat this principle with the respect it deserves. Internal audiences expect messages to be delivered with as much creative thought and effort as paying customers in the outside world.

When the EE brand launched in the UK, our 500 plus Orange Group employees could have felt left behind – with our EE colleagues sporting a shiny new brand identity. The UK team is an essential component of the global Orange business, responsible for liaising with the growing list of over 30 countries around the world flourishing under the Orange brand. We needed to reassure them and acknowledge their importance.

We chose to refresh our UK workspaces, reinforcing the Orange brand identity. However, brand communication via a professional working space has particular challenges – it needs to engage but not overpower; it needs to feel fresh, but have longevity and in our case, we needed it to be fun, without being flippant or twee.

Our brief was simple – make our people smile and reinforce our brand values.

Creatively, we wanted to celebrate the international diversity of the team and unite them by capturing and communicating what it means to be part of Orange. We used illustration as the core design element, giving us the flexibility to tell stories and incorporate some trademark Orange wit and humour, which was essential to fulfilling our brief.

We used large wall spaces to celebrate travel, our international workforce, diversity of language and global footprint. Offices and meeting rooms were renamed for international cities and illustrated with windows looking onto their namesake’s cityscapes.

The addition of physical objects broughtthe illustration style out of flat spaces and into the office spaces by adding small touches that highlight a playful spirit. “Surprise and delight” is a phrase we often use and we applied the same principles here. Completing the entire installation over one weekend gave us an inspiring Monday morning reveal that got people talking and truly engaged with their instinctive spirit of the brand, while further hidden illustrations created a buzz that had them exploring and interacting with the office space and branding in ways we’d never seen.

After successful installations in London and Bristol, we made the imagery available globally, generating a universal look and feel for office spaces that better connect our employee community, reducing creative spend and maximising consistency. Our approach gave us a consistent, flexible in-house style.

No business should think of communication, whether external or internal, as something that exists separately from design. Nor does creativity have to equal never-ending expenditure. The working environment affects how employees feel about their day to day work., so how a business chooses to brand its spaces is by definition a significant internal communications statement. How much time and creativity it invested in communicating with employees signifies how much it cares.

It takes buy-in from the top, if a business is to incorporate brand design across every touchpoint, but there are few better ways to demonstrate confidence than by starting inside your business. And it’s infectious.

So look around now, and ask yourself - how effectively, and creatively, is your business using design for internal communication? 

Jason Panudy is head of creative & brand identity at Orange.