Expect the unexpected

The watchful eyes of predator’s peer out at you through a mass of jungle flora, meanwhile a parrot perches on an ominous symbol.

Eight-foot tidal waves tower overhead adorned with a tangle of octopus tentacles. One tentacle brandishes a message on a bottle proclaiming, ‘adventure starts where planning ends’.

Walls that are crammed from floor to ceiling with a hypnotic array of doodles immerse you in a world of space-cats, unicorns and robots.

This isn’t what you’d expect to find in an office on an industrial estate. But then Barley House are not your normal industrial estate occupants. Or normal in any sense of the word.

Here we catch up with the creatives at Barley House behind the anarchy that has descended on this unsuspecting industrial estate:

Andy Morton, Creative Director

Dan O’Connell, Art Director

Rebecca Cuthbert, Senior Creative Designer

Let’s start with the big question – why?

Andy:

We’ve rebranded Barley House and our new brand must be integrated into everything we do and across all touchpoints.

We champion unorthodox solutions, a relentless commitment to the imaginative, a strategic approach to everyday challenges and constant collaboration. We wanted our internal environment to reflect this.

As a result, we’ve transformed our corridors, meeting rooms and entrance into an eclectic landscape where the only thing you can expect is the unexpected.

Dan:

Our aim is to help brave brands be remarkable and what better way to showcase this than doing it for ourselves?

Clients come to use for our disruptive and unexpected solutions – we want to lead and inspire companies to stand up and be brave.

We want them to see what we’ve done and think, I want Barley House to do something remarkable for us.

Who created the concepts for the designs?

Dan:

It was a team effort – we have seven people in our creative team, giving us a wealth of knowledge, experience and expertise. Collaboration is key for us so we wanted everyone to be involved in the process.

This is one of the reasons what we’ve produced is eclectic and unexpected – it reflects all the different personalities and experience that makes Barley House unique.

Andy:

Everyone was involved in creating the concepts and Rebecca was appointed the creative lead and responsible for designing the artwork and bringing our ideas to life.

Can you talk us through the ideas behind the designs?

Rebecca:

The jungle entrance is based around the theme ‘Be brave today’, which is displayed on the wall as you enter. This is designed to encourage the client to enter an environment that is mysterious and unexpected.

We understand that whatever size the creative challenge a client may face it may be uncomfortable or daunting, like the environment, but there will always be a supportive team to help them on their journey.

The wallpaper design for the corridor is loosely based around the woodcut from Katsushika Hokusai, ‘The Great Wave off Kanagawa’. We felt that this style visually showed how something that looks quite simple are actually a complex arrange of elements.

The kraken also symbolizes how we can face tough decisions that seem insurmountable and defeat them if we’re brave enough.

What can we expect to see next from Barley House?

Andy:

The internal environment changes we’ve made set the bar. We’ve started as we mean to go on – I can’t say too much at this stage, only look out for more brave and remarkable feats from us in the not to distant future.