Google BrandLab
Cubby Wall
Role: Creative Director/Strategy
Art Director: Jason Strand
Principle Industrial Design: Felix Ballerstedt
Motion Design: Emily Skaer
Overview
One of YouTube’s most exclusive programs, BrandLab was created to bring together c-level leaders of major world brands and their agencies-of-record for an all-day, hands-on, no-screens workshop designed to help them learn to create compelling and meaningful content on the platform. Equal parts of art and data, these workshops press everyone to better understand their audience and to tell stories at a human-level.
The focus of the Cubby project was to rebuild from scratch the welcome experience at the flagship location at YouTube’s headquarters in San Bruno. From the shape and materials of the wall itself, to the interface of the touch panels, to the interior fabric lining each cubby, every element of the experience had to be considered and developed to work together to create a moment of celebration, understanding, and excitement for the day ahead.
Concept Development
A number of early conceptual directions were explored for this project, each of them emphasizing different elements of Google, BrandLab, the workshop experience, and the guests themselves. Thematically, we examined ideas as varied as Rube Goldberg Machines, to architectural post-modernism, and even the relationships between early mythology and constellations. In the end, a number of these ideas were brought together to create the Cubby Wall. Part exploration of data, part celebration of journey, and part personal space — the Cubby is meant to serve as each guests anchor point as they move in and out of the BrandLab studio. It welcomes them as they arrive, uses data to connect them with their fellow attendees and seeks to provide a bit of magic to their visit to YouTube.
Wall Design Development
Once the high-level direction of the wall was establishing, dozens of iterations were created exploring various materials and layouts. One key consideration throughout was accessibility. With a requirement to provide at least 22 individual cubbys, we built several half scale models of the final wall to make sure everyone visiting BrandLab would have a space that felt like it was made just for them.
UI Development
The nature of the BrandLab experience provided a number of unique challenges in the development of the visual language for the user interface, animations, and data visualizations. Among the many demands on the graphic system was that be both readable from afar — to support the sweep of screens across the top used to display data — while not being visually overwhelming when a guest was engaging with the UI in their personal Cubby. Further, the core Cubby graphics needed to work on their own, or combined with the graphic language of visiting brands. Finally, because nearly all guests are visiting for the first time, the UI needed to be instantly welcoming, understandable, and engaging while requiring almost no learning curve.
Interior Design Development
While the macro design elements — the design of the wall itself as well as the design language of the displays — create most of the initial experience, it's the smaller considerations that bring the entire experience together. Everything from the felt used to line the trays for a guests laptop and phone, to the lighting cues inside the cubby, to the presentation of the customized notebooks — every element was considered on its own and in its relation to the experience as a whole.