Decorating the new space

[Andy51055]

We have now painted nearly all of the new hackspace white and it’s time to think about colour.
Do we want the entire place to be white and if so should we highlight areas with colour LEDs occasionally? Or do we want to paint any of the walls in a flat ‘feature’ colour?

In the current space a large part of the wall space above the desks is made of windows, so gets dark at night when most of us are in. In the new space there are no windows in the work areas so the big white walls will be a huge contrast to everything going on below on the desks, workbenches, etc.

I would argue that as we have a brand colour, Hackspace blue, we should use that in the space. The brand is the space, so it should have the brand colour. But if we make an entire wall Hackspace blue it will be rather overwhelming as it is rather dark and unexciting. So we can paint the picture rail in Hackspace blue so that in all pictures and videos taken of cool stuff we’ve made or acquired in the space we will have part of our branding - it will be obviously Leeds Hackspace and people will associate the colour (and so the brand) with cool stuff. Which is the point of branding.

The reason to choose the picture rail is that it is small so it will be subtle but it is high up so won’t get obscured by all the cool stuff. The aim is not for it to be in your face, but just in the background all the time. Ultrafez has said that he wants it to be white so that it is less noticeable as picture rails look dated. Ironically that’s exactly why we chose to put them on the outside of the new workshop wall, so that it looked like it had been there for a while, a way of pulling the front space together. In the kitchen we need picture rail to hide the fact that the previous tenants didn’t bother to plasterboard the upper walls and just left a really messy top edge.

As for the walls, making them all flat white then gives us a huge canvas for doing what we do so well - playing with LEDs. The people who have been working on the space keep coming up with new and wonderful ideas for how we can use LEDs in the space: around the top of the architrave of the front skylight, thus colouring the sides (or just making them daylight white at night so that the light changes as little as possible (add light sensors and they could brighten as the outside darkens); down the little lips along the long wall so that the entire wall can be coloured in one to four different colours; around the inside of the workshop window so that the front room keeps getting daylight through the window even at night; above the beams in the workshop to do the same for the workshop (and light the ‘H’ there) and so on.
And we can program the interior light to be temperature-sensitive so that as it gets colder the light can get warmer/redder which makes people feel warmer and so saves us on heating. This is not the 20th century and we have the skills to make the most of this huge new canvas.

Also we’re hoping to draw in more makers and craftspeople, so the more welcoming we can make the space the better.

Please post your thoughts here - it's your space.

[Aidan Dunbar]

(There's a TL;DR)

Samwise has put together a Google album of places that are similar in purpose to ours. You can find it below:

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipOs7Y862y1JnT1kfMo2q366n257h-gNsDpUqUyAIaV9ZhFwrLaYQxu0b8pbM8m4cQ?key=dHFPa2JIVjFyb1dtb0FlWDJ0SnpDcVlSYkZyZ0Rn

In this album you will find examples of the following:

• Integrating LED lighting strips into walls without it looking cheap and nasty.
• Incorporating brand colours into a space
• Injecting colour and warmth into a building

It also includes some examples from Duke Studios, a very successful (and good looking) co-working space situated in Leeds. Please join this album and add your own ideas to it.

Katie also made a pinterest of Hackspace ideas, which is here:

https://uk.pinterest.com/kickles/hackspace-interior-ideas/

Amongst other things it demonstrates the strong use of colour on accent walls, on storage lockers and some good ideas for material storage.

Personally, I think the blue picture rail is overwhelming and draws attention to something which is literally the worst part of the entire building: the ceiling. Additionally, the idea that painting the trim an interpretation of "Hackspace Blue" will improve brand recognition, or establish a brand, is a fallacy. Most of the time it won't be in photos at all; when it is it will literally be an insignificant line in the background. It is also the exact opposite of subtle when one edge (the white ceiling tiles) essentially don't exist yet, so how it will look when located between two white surfaces...

Focus instead on putting the "brand" colours into the workspace itself.

If you want to put LEDs everywhere then great, but make sure it doesn't look like a takeaway or worse. Put them in the walls, the ceilings, wherever. The colour imparted by an RGB LED strip on a white wall is somewhat negligible, so to say you can use it to colour an entire wall (without costing a fortune in LEDs, electricity bills or cataract surgery) is potentially leading people up the garden path. It can accent well, colour wash not so much. Please see the attached images, they're not perfect because it's a camera phone, the "wrong" colour for the sensor and lacking diffusion, but you get the idea.

None of the accenting (bar the painting of the picture rail) needs to be done now, and I suggest not until we move in and have everything set out. There's nothing worse than spending a day installing something only for a cupboard to built in front of it the next week. Grab a map (attached), take some pictures, draw on them with pen and paper and show us what you have. Words are worthless, draw it. To do it properly is also expensive, so wait until there's more capital floating around and do it well first time.

TL;DR:

• Look at the Google Album and Pinterest. 'Join' the album and add your own images.
• Blue picture rails look terrible, and using trim woodwork in an attempt to establish brand is beyond silly. Paint them white please (neatly).
  
• White walls look good, it's going to have stuff in so it won't look clinical. The furniture/doors/table legs can all be coloured.
  
• Embed & diffuse your LED strips please.
• Show us what you want, don't tell us. Draw a picture, annotate a photograph, link a relevant photograph.

Aidan

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[J C]

Aiden- you make some excellent points especially about putting the brand colour into more noticeable place. I might suggest to get a better example of what effect the picture rail will give we get someone with a good camera this weekend to take it and  add a couple of the nicer ceiling tiles we have - plus let Andy neaten up the bottom so we get a better idea of what it would look like. 

[Andy51055]

Yes, good points indeed.
Hopefully when the promised new tiles are put in the ceiling won't look bad and the rail will simply be a strip of colour between two flat white areas. And as you say, the areas of interest will be at table/desk height and there will be shelves, large monitors etc. covering large amounts of the walls so it shouldn't attract much attention. The best branding is subliminal, after all.
If he's not too exhausted Nav will drop in this afternoon after I've finished edging the rail and will post pics.

[tenst...@me.com]

Here's one of our offices, it offers a perfect example of how picking out details in paint doesn't really work in an office or warehouse.

[J C]

So the original proposer has changed their mind about the picture rail so its staying white. 

I would recommend everyone reads Adian's email in full and add to the collection of examples of good looking spaces for inspiration on what ours will look like in the end, because as everyone agrees we want a nice looking space to work in and attract more people to. 

Thanks

Joe 

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[Andy Cook]

Can I ask why we have ended up with picture rail? How come we arn't relying on the metal ceiling grid perimeter profile on shadow baton (square edged wood usually black or white the metal angle is fastened too?

I'm sorry I don't like the coloured picture rail, keep everything white, using a main brand mat paint which at any time you can just re-roller a patch and it will blend in perfectly. Or go for a much more expensive acrylic eggshell something like diamond coat (can't remember exact paint type) which is fully washable however downside with all acrylic eggshells is they flash when touched up meaning when you look from certain angles you'll always see the touched up section.

Keep it simple guys, use display boards / lighting to add features that can be updated easily. Let's not get to bogged down with emotional states of colours, yes we are inclusive of all people if you start going down that route someone somewhere will have a reason or take offence.

And ultimately we want the space to look nice be consistent but at the end of the day we are an ameature / volunteer based members organisation who ultimately even if we reach our full members potential will only ever be known / interested to a minuscule amount of the population.

If anyone doesn't want to join because the walls are too white, or there is a blue picture rail or we've used red then perhaps we should conceed that they may be better off not joining 😜

[Andy51055]

We ended up with picture rail because it was already up in large parts of the space, so we added it to the newly-built walls to make them fit in.  There is no shadow baton in the place - the (often dented or bent) metal angle is nailed or screwed directly to the walls or missing entirely and the ceiling grid rests on the picture rail. So continuing to use the picture rail to hide it seemed the obvious solution and least work.

[Samwise Wilson]

I would say that someone must know a interior designer. We are in Leeds!

It will be useful to have a single design source or coordinator who can visualise elements and dispelled the bad ones.

[Andy51055]

We have interior designers in the Hackspace - Andy (as far as I know) designs clubs and suchlike, I have designed shops, cafes and domestic properties, and there may well be other people here with similar skills.
What we don’t have is consensus.

It would be useful to have a single design source, but as we've seen it wouldn’t work for the Hackspace. We’re a semi-democratic group whose tastes vary wildly and who range from folks who really couldn’t care as long as they can get on with their projects to folk with a strong need to control their environment. So working out a consensus is always going to be difficult as there will always be dissenting voices. And in our setup those who are against something tend to get their way as none of us want to upset the other members.

The only way to do it would be to agree on a designer and then say in advance that whatever they choose goes. Which is bound to upset some of the members…
Because we don’t have an agreed remit. Some think the space should be a workshop first and foremost and that it should be kept as simple as possible as people will treat it like a shitpit anyway, some think that it should be a social space where people would want to come whether they have a project to work on or not. In terms of interior design, those are near opposites and virtually irreconcilable.
We don’t even have a timescale; some think it should be done before we move in, some afterwards, when we have everything set out.

So the first step would have to be to decide on a remit - what do we want the space to be - soft and comfortable or sharp and efficient? Does it want to be the organic-industrial retro with wood, brass and copper (we don’t have the option of Victorian brick like Duke studios and others, sadly) or clean, flat white with LEDs, stainless steel and rectangular slabs of colour? Who do we want to attract, more hackers or more makers? Do we want to keep the two types separate or force a mix? Obviously none of these are exclusive, there will be a balance, but where should that balance lie? In terms of designing the space we have far more unasked questions than answers.

[Samwise Wilson]

The overall feeling I've received is a steer away from domestic / residential. More modern feeling stuff doesn't mean it isn't friendly, welcoming or presented well.

I believe emphasis on 'chillspace' was a iteration on a earlier part of the old space that didn't get reasonable reward compared to a hackspsaces core offering.

We don't need a single designer, but a coordinator that can visualise and coordinate the various design bits thorough newspace, so we get a little bit of interoperability.

Hackspsaces have a lot of functions, so we need to let those lead the design - thinking about the potential for growth and the storage / paradigm shift that brings helped me think about the strength in simplicity.

[Andy51055]

Oh, and when I say Andy, I could well mean Phil; I haven't spoken to him enough to lock his name down. ;)

[tenst...@me.com]

A useful design principle here could be 'Design from patterns to details".

Looking at the google photos at https://photos.google.com/u/1/share/AF1QipOs7Y862y1JnT1kfMo2q366n257h-gNsDpUqUyAIaV9ZhFwrLaYQxu0b8pbM8m4cQ?pageId=none&key=dHFPa2JIVjFyb1dtb0FlWDJ0SnpDcVlSYkZyZ0Rn

I see one pattern of "repeating structural elements with a common horizontal level" (or something like that)

It's in shelves, storage containers, desks, displays, screens, benches, windows.

I see another pattern of "pops of bright colour"

It's a useful principle because it helps you get started without getting into distracting detail.

[tenst...@me.com]

So we can decide on e.g. no more than three patterns and use that as a starting point.

 

[Samwise Wilson]

This is a great principle and I think we could execute it!

My 3 would be;

Function - dedicated items constructed to support xyz need as much as possible. 3d printer cab in the album is an example of this. Current space suffers from a lack of dedicated storage / workspace like this because of its size. So I think doing this will help reduce the mess / where's my tool factor and also become easier to show what the hackspace supports.

Simple materials - the best examples in the album to my eyes are white + timber combos. They are easier for us to execute because they are simple. This is also compounded by the workshop area photos... They are all full off stuff! So any design would be hard to get through.

Colour pops / cool stuff - we have the technology, we can rebuild him. Finding or provisioning space for cool projects I think is dear to all our hearts and then can become the pattern to make it not too clean / empty.