We love our friends over at Google, and we love the work we get to do with them. So much so that we're proud to be showcasing a few of our favorite projects, experiences, and learnings from collaborating with them over the past couple of years.

To start, we’d love to share a bit about what we’ve been tasked with on their projects.

In a nutshell, we serve Google through visual design and brand strategy, which includes supporting the development of design guidance documents and providing thought leadership in partnership with OFFICEUNTITLED and Google project leads. We also host brand strategy ideation workshop sessions and focused presentations with stakeholders.

Cool, cool, cool. But what does that even mean?

We provide Google with standardization tools that help their teams successfully create beautiful public and private Google spaces – all through a branded lens. To say the least, it’s fun “work” and we adore the Googlers we’ve had the opportunity to work with on projects.

So, how do we actually tackle all this?

Well, through a highly organized and process-oriented approach:

First we establish the framework which will define the process for the particular project and determine the approach for stakeholder engagement.
Next, we move into workshops and ideation where we’re in discovery mode – we chat about all the things (how the space will operate, what’s the vibe, who’s showing up to eat/drink, what’s on the menu, etc.).
Once decided, the concept development stage takes place where we develop the design narrative and brand story through defining core values, messaging, and all visual aspects – moodboards, mockups for tangibilization (which is a real word, ok?), logo options, wayfinding signage, and more.
Lastly, we’ll synthesize as a team and deliver the brand assets.

It all sounds simple on paper, but when you get a group of creative thinkers together in a room, chaos can ensue if a structured process isn’t in place to help guide the project toward a goal.

This work is so rewarding because we get to work with a team that truly “gets it.” The Googlers understand how important this approach is and work with us to create some real life magic in their spaces. 🧡

Placemaking

Speaking of spaces, let's talk about some of the placemaking work we’ve done with them.

The perfect example of this is the work we did on the Charleston East project. Google wanted to make a community hub for their team, so they created a space that is rooted in sustainable design and connecting people. This adds value to the neighborhood and makes it a place where you look forward to spending your time. They made a thriving spot for everyone to gather – community members and Googlers alike.

Google asked us to step in on the Charleston East project as brand consultants for two particular public spaces. We can’t show you the work delivered for each (yet!), but figured we could share the moodboard that inspired one of the spaces. The initial step in developing the color story, always, is building from the core Google brand (red, yellow, blue and green). We curated the moodboard to express the space as both whimsical and comfortable, bold and minimal, colorful and classic – with an overall goal to incite inspiration in the hearts of those who visit the space.

Urban Activation is something we’re very passionate about around here, so work like this is the perfect partnership.

Workshop Work Shots

Now, we'd like to resurrect some designs that have never seen the light of day.

We are pleased to present…

From the Graveyard: branded project design concepts that didn’t make the cut.

Want to see more of these? Too bad. You can’t. That’s proprietary, duh.

A taste is all you get on these puppies, but they are pretty tasty right?

Learnings

Looking through all the amazing projects we've worked on with them has us reminiscing over all the lessons we've learned and how much we've grown from this team.

Truly too much to put into one blogpost.

To showcase a little bit, though, here are some nifty presentation design strategy tidbits:

Consistency is key: Keep everything unified across the board - including your use of language/terms and design elements. When collaborating in a template on Google Slides, use those Theme Layouts (master slides) to keep it all synched up. Makes it easy to keep things in line.
Order and flow of pages matters: Think thoughtfully about your reader’s journey through your presentation. Lead them through the slides properly to ensure they’re consuming information in a logical way in order to help them fully grasp the concept.
Consider collaboration: We use Google Slides for presentations. Not only because we work with Google within their program ecosystem, but because we often encourage and include client collaboration during projects. Google Slides is super user friendly, and we love using it as a team, even on other non-Google projects. It makes things easy, accessible, and opens the doors to teamwork.
Prioritize your information: People don’t like to read multiple paragraphs of information or look at busy slides. Keep it as digestible and as simple as possible. Clarity is a gamechanger here.
Include visuals: Photo examples, diagrams, and tables all make your message more tangible and understandable. This makes your presentation all the more memorable, and generally impressive. Don’t just tell them, show them!

Working with these teams that have the art of presentations on lock have taught us so much, and we love applying all of these learnings to our projects (and our personal lives).

The Google way really is a way of life.

Memory Lane

To finish out this Google-y post, we’re going to reminisce a bit about our visit to their campuses last year. Being in this incredible physical space alongside the team we’ve collaborated with so closely was great fun. We left feeling inspired, motivated, excited, invigorated, [insert all the best words you can think of here].

Here are a few photos that are a true testament to how a creatively-designed space can help foster a creatively-motivated workforce. Check out these views of urban activation at work in the Google workplaces.

We hope you enjoyed learning more about our work with Google as much as we have enjoyed sharing it! We said it once, but we’ll say it again, we LOVE working with this team and are so proud of everything we’ve been able to accomplish with them.

And to our favorite Googlers and the team at OU - thank you for trusting us with your brand and for being the best people to work with. We appreciate you each and every day.