First Look! 👀 Building London's Fastest-Growing Design Studio: The Whitepaper Story with Victoria Dixon

0:00It's so true though because you actually mentioned it earlier that people might think design is about choosing a few cushions and matching it to a rug. Yeah. And I so agree with you that people do feel like that and it's so far from the truth. And I often am talking to people and I'm like design is like a multifaceted skill set from psychology, like understanding behaviors, like exploring people's strengths and helping them flourish. whether they're extrovert maybe neurodivergent in some ways and there's like business processes and how you want people to feel and how you want people to move and how you want people to collaborate or maybe not collaborate or whatever it is and I'm like it's not a curtain or it's not a rug or it's not a wall finish it's like a psychology piece like almost and it's phenomenal when it works it's just like it's the impact it has on how people think and feel and behave is massive and then obviously in turn like ROI and stuff so which is why people do it but I just it's so what you said it's just so hit like a hot button for me I'm like so like yeah it's like it's not it's so it's so important it's so key yeah I think like exactly that the the psychology and make it how you can how you can make someone feel in a space is just so important and also in in one space you can make people feel different emotions so you know you can create in a you know in your reception areas you might want it to feel really cozy and inviting and you might want that essence of your brand or whatever to come to hit you really hard as you kind of come through the door but you know open plan you might want it to feel like much more fresh and invigorating and you know you're going to be spending a lot of time there so it kind of can't feel as um kind of cozy and like all of these things but I think that's part of understanding that you know the client's brief and what they need and who they are as a company and what they also want their visitors to feel so yeah there's there's layers brief take is never just uh you know quantities on a on a spreadsheet which sometimes you get you really have to kind of dig into it and understand like who's coming to this space how do you want them to feel how does that reflect in the materiality and the colours and the lighting, like lighting is so important.

2:24How can you, you know, adapt that through the days? We want it to be really bright in the days. We want to be able to tone it down for different points with different people. And I think the industry, the more it looks at flexibility and adapting its surroundings too is, I mean, that's a whole kind of another topic. But, yeah, it's cool to understand that you're such a big part of something someone's life yeah someone's success so deep no it is like I always think that like a privilege to be able to touch people's lives because even now they go home from how they've been at work it will impact how they go home yeah and their relationships their night's sleep their everything like it's the interior is so massive it's it's it's like an honor to be like touching such a massive I think going back to how you were saying like the white paper style I think a lot of it comes through like there's a real calmness there's there's the tactile and the the kind of feeling of like coziness but and obviously not for every scheme but I think it needs to foot us quite often we there's a big focus on do people feel like comfortable and calm in the workspace yeah is there a particular trend you're loving right now so I think trends are really difficult in design because I love them and I'm you know reading the magazines and articles like I'm such a design lover that it's it's really cool to stay up to date with trends but I think you also have to really kind of know what does work and be able to pull like pallets together that are quite timeless and know how you can kind of just mix things that people say that in you know five years time if they really want to shake things up they're not having to pull everything out and stick it back together um but in saying that also you know not everyone's taste is the same so you have to also be able to kind of work with other clients preferences and their palates and things like that I would say more of a movement is um moving I guess that more hospitality feel into the workplace so how people now and even that kind of residential um style that we just touched on making offices feel definitely more like how would you how you'd want your house or if you're going to go out for a coffee and things like that I think that's been a real you know post-pandemic movement for sure is now people are choosing to be in the office when they could be at home so um let's make sure again that the office space is really beautiful and not just a functional place I like that you mentioned the word movement though because I do agree trends are can be fleeting they can be unsustainable it can mean that you're ripping something out because it's out of fashion now and all that sort of thing which and I hear that like whilst it's exciting it can be detrimental but yeah when you talk about a movement like a shift in thinking like oh now spaces don't have to be gray floors and walls and white desks we can now actually incorporate something more that's not just a trend that's like people now changing how they work and it's the modern world so i'm really glad you said the word movement because that's massive like that is well that is what we're we're keeping up to date in a fresh modern adapted world yeah Thank you.