- April 26, 2018
-
Matthew F. Fox
- 4 min
Earlier today, tribe member Andrew Kwasny and I toured Valiant’s new office space. New walls are up and the layout of the office is beginning to take shape:
We now have a roughly 5,500ft² blank canvas to work with and will be using our newly expanded color palette to breathe some life in to the space.
Color can influence thinking and actions, and be used to produce reactions. It can attract attention, cause agitation, or soothe the eyes. Our goal is to use our newly expanded color palette to bring pops of color to the new space; accenting key areas with color to represent who we are – a diverse group of technologists and creatives driven to provide innovative solutions that enable our clients to leverage technology and allow their businesses to thrive.
Orange, and then some.
In mid-2017 we made the decision to drop the usage of brown and yellow, and continue using only Valiant Orange, supported by several shades of grey. This change, along with the selection of a new corporate typeface, enabled communications to have a more contemporary look and feel.
Now that the dust around the change has settled, we’ve decided to introduce several new colors to our palette:
We chose colors that form an analogous color scheme, created around Valiant’s orange, that is pleasing to the eye and enables us to better call attention to important details in our communications, and bring a vibrant splash of color to everything we do.
Andrew and I are also looking in to ways to introduce some interesting textures and quirky visuals to the new space’s walls, ventilation ducts, pipes, and other architectural details. Some of our current ideas include accent walls, applying patterns made from color-matched vinyl sheets run through plotters, pin-striping walkways, and graphics (like old school 8-bit sprites) that represent our common interests.
Cutouts of Valiant’s Tao using our corporate typeface, Poppins, will be cut from white vinyl and applied to a wall near our entrance.
Here’s where the green comes in
Not too long after joining Valiant, I was given the unique opportunity to create a hydroponics lab. A hydroponics lab in a tech company? Yes! We work with electronics all day, and the ability to tend to something organic, something whose progress is not measured in milliseconds, offers a fun way to escape the fast pace of technology for a moment, clear our minds, and better serve our clients.
It’s also very gratifying to tend to our plants, provide them with the resources that they need to thrive, and then enjoy the fruits of our labor over a meal, literally.
We’ve grown several types of basil, jalapeño peppers, buttercrunch lettuce, and cherry tomatoes:
Cherry tomatoes
Buttercrunch lettuce and cherry tomato plants
Our hydroponics lab is kept in a light-safe tent for the benefit of the plants we grow, so it isn’t something that can easily be seen by our staff and office visitors. We’re going to change that.
Orange & green
Integrations of varying technologies play a large role in the work that we do, so why not integrate our passion for technology with our urban gardening interests? Even better, how about we repurpose old technology to act as a home for new life?
Our plans are to repurpose an old ATX computer case, paint it Valiant orange, and drop a hydroponic reservoir in to it. We’ll select some low maintenance plants – ones that are slow growing and won’t produce any allergens. Think about it for a moment – organic life springing forth from old technology; the faint hum of an air pump tucked inside as it oxygenates the environment, and the original case LEDs blinking randomly… how awesome is that?
We’ll place some low power lighting overhead, surround it with marketing materials, and have a really cool centerpiece for our visitors to look at (and learn from) while waiting for meetings.
I’m thinking dwarf Bok Choy or micro greens to get started; something that requires little to no pruning and can be used in food. You ever have a nice turkey sandwich topped with broccoli sprouts you grew from something that ran Windows 7? VMs on a host machine is one thing, but Virtual Garnishes? You can practically taste the hypervisor in every bite.
Just no crypto carrots. I don’t mess with that stuff. Too volatile.
