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Channeling a ‘hotel lobby vibe’, the offices features two front doors, bright hues of green and pink, an eight-metre marble bar, continuous winding desks and an extensive balcony that overlooks Sydney's Redfern Park occasion- ally agency staff use to spy on the Rabbitohs rugby league club train- ing, who else could bring such inventive ideas to life?
Swann: “The space looks quite different to what it would have looked like if the whole pandemic hadn't happened, because we've tried to acknowledge the fact that working practices have inherently changed.
“But we didn't want to hive everyone off into rooms so instead we tried to create a hotel lobby vibe.
“Which is why there are lots of communal and workshopping spaces, which encourages cowork- ers to spark up conversations regardless of how much they know each other because I think that's when collaboration is at its best.
“I was very keen from the outset to not have formulaic rows of desks. “Probably from an efficiency perspective, you wouldn't do this configuration as it uses up more space. But what it does mean is that people have to walk a bit of a winding road which encourages them to stop and chat to their cow-
orkers along their way.
“The way we designed the space
was once we had the location, we engaged the whole agency to help us. We crowdsourced ideas and thoughts that people had found creatively inspiring in other environments and mashed them all together.
“That's partly why I believe we’ve got such a good reaction from the staff because it's rare to get the opportunity to create a space and actually see your ideas coming to life.
“And obviously, that's the name of the game, we're trying to create a space that people are inspired to come into every day."
Why does a digital marketing agency have a in-house podcast studio? Impressive Digital has a lively office with an industrial aesthetic complimented by staff art, local coffee beans by the kilograms and an in-house podcast studio.
Spinach Advertising, South Melbourne (pictured left).
Thinkerbell, Redfern (top right).
Mediabrands’ penthouse, Surry Hills, Sydney (middle right).
Thinkerbell, Redfern (bottom right).
The office, just off South Yarra’s bustling Chapel St, was designed with Acquila Interiors alongside Robert Tadros, founder and CEO of Impressive. Impressive’s branding is lightly integrated throughout the office with the agency's company values written on the outside of meeting rooms in the brand's colour and font, to ensure the values are always
front of mind.
The motivation for the state-of-the-art studio was that CEO Robert
Tadros and general manager for the US Russ Macumber have two suc- cessful podcast series.
Tadros is an advocate for face to face connections, so he was passionate about having a space he could record his podcast in-person, as during COVID he had to do the majority of his podcast recording virtually.
The space accommodates three people on a podcast recording, has a TV, casual sitting area and has been fully sound-proofed using acoustic panels. In-room equipment includes the RØDEcaster pro podcast pro- duction studio, with RØDE microphones and Yamaha headphones.
Impressive has also provided the space free of charge to other podcast hosts previously, but haven't investigated renting the space out to clients as the agency is still getting back into the groove of face to face meetings being possible again.
The podcast space also has a dual-use as when Impressive isn’t record- ing, the room makes for a fantastic informal catch up area for the team.
A messy office or the creative process?
Independent strategic branding and design agency Hulsbosch has an