Paulina McFarland recently joined HGA as a Senior Environmental Designer focusing on branded workplace environments. She has more than 17 years’ experience as a graphic designer specializing in experiential design, brand identity, web design, illustration, environmental signage, brand installations, and packaging. Through her work, she combines storytelling skills with analytical thinking to create humanistic narratives that connect people with brands. In the following, she discusses how environmental graphic designs builds a company’s cultural brand.
What inspires you creatively?
I have a background in art, so this has always been one of my biggest inspirations, but also science fiction books and stories. I love how other people create entire worlds, complete with their own technology and ideology, and how far they can reach creatively in their minds. I am fascinated by other people’s creative process too. Sometimes I am influenced by it, sometimes inspired, sometimes it pushes me to reexamine my own work and take it into more exciting places. Right now, I am very intrigued by light design, and how that affects graphics and interiors.
Tell us how you help clients envision their brand through environmental design?
I try to infuse a brand with a narrative that expands on the values and missions of their company. I hope to make the client see something different and deeper in their own brand not just numbers, or statistics, or what’s exactly in the brand guide. Instead, I focus on what their brand or service means to people (this could be their employees, clients, customers). I place the emphasis on human experience whatever that may be, and it allows them to see their own brand in another dimension, in a humanized and very real way.
Then I try to bring those human experiences into a design world. I use symbolism, unexpected materials, inspirational language, again anything that will connect the client (brand) and their audiences.
How does the architecture impact your work?
I think working with architects has taught me to think bigger in terms of materials and compositions. The opportunities to integrate light interventions, sculptures, and work with materials that are beyond just paper, or vinyl, has freed me in a lot of ways.
Now I look at materials and ask, what else can be done? How can I use the existing space layout to everyone’s advantage? How can we integrate graphics so they become a part of a deeper experience?
I am recently very much interested in environmental graphics as an emotional space, where audiences are propelled to feel more, to connect with the space they occupy. It can happen in a nook where they feel safe and have a sense of privacy, or a big bright collab space where they feel inspired and elevated. These are the things I worry about now vs. a few years back when I only wanted to create an effective wall pattern.
This approach, beyond just being pleased with the design, moves me to ask and answer bigger and better questions and demand more of graphic design and focus on the user and their needs.
How do you use graphics to connect people emotionally with brands?
It remains true that storytelling is and always will connect people better with a brand by telling a relatable story that goes beyond brand color and logo. People want to be captivated, inspired, and ultimately align with the values of the brands they favor. This trend only has grown since the pandemic, as a lot of people are becoming more introspective and re-evaluate what is important to them.
I try to bring in that humanity to the way I work with brands, to put the user at the center, not to make the brand a hero. I focus on people, be it customers, clients, founders, and tap into the story of human emotions. I try to find a common human experience that a brand can bridge.
It’s best to give an example to illustrate how I would approach it. If my clients were an insurance company, I would examine the emotions that propel one to buying insurance, the need for safety, feeling of protection, or a sense of empowerment, and build a narrative around that. I might take quotes, memorable moments from people’s lives—like weddings, birthday parties, sending kids off to college—and display those moments on a wall to create a moment where we could tap into a universal human experience. I would look at materials that audiences associate with safety, like foam, pillows, something smooth and comforting like a blanket, wool, or leather. I would look into colors that are subdued, or sensations of being enveloped in a hue. Then I would look at my graphics and determine which design motifs best express that emotion of safety-a pattern taken from a quilt but blown up and painted on a metal door would be interesting to look at and unexpected. I think the elements of surprise and delight matter very much in a space. I would also ask if the design or installation goes beyond “cleverness” and evokes any emotion or interest.
Has the pandemic impacted your design approach?
A lot of project work has been on standstill for the past year, so there is/was a bit of a lull, but it has opened other avenues for me.
I think about how our workplaces will change, and flex. Virtual worlds are somewhat still to be tapped by designers to re-imagine new work cultures and habits.
Also, how do we create spaces that feel safe, both in terms of possible future pandemics, safe both physically and mentally. Can a workplace protect and shelter from insecurities of the hostile environment?
Mental safety is now of concern more than ever: how will we ease people into this new world, and help decrease their anxieties? Can environmental design help by creating spaces that nurture and care for our sanity? These are the questions I have been coming back to in the past year. It will be interesting to experiment and examine these ideas in real life, as companies open their doors again.
What do you do in your free time?
Try to make some art whenever I can. I screen-print, publish short format art books, publish a magazine called Manifesto where I illustrate and re-print old cultural manifestos, I keep busy on the weekends.
If not an environmental designer, what would you be?
I gave that away already, a sci-fi writer.
For more information, visit Paulina McFarland’s recent blog What to Consider When Designing a Successful Signage System.