ExecOnline DC
WORKPLACE ENVIRONMENT & NAMING
A workspace that could only be in Washington.
ROLE
VP, Creative
CLIENT
ExecOnline
LOCATION
Washington, DC
YEARS
2022-2023
SCOPE
Workplace environment · Naming system · Mural commission & art direction · Signage & wayfinding
TEAM
Creative team of five, I built the function up from one
Mural by Aniekan Udofia, commissioned for the DC office.
THE BRIEF
An office fit-out normally goes to an architect and a furniture vendor, and the brand turns up at the end as a logo on the wall behind reception. The DC office could have gone that way.
It didn't, because ExecOnline is an online professional education company that provides B2B leadership development and coaching programs for mid-to-senior level managers and enterprises. The office is one of the few places it exists as a place rather than a platform, and if the room feels generic then so does everything that happens in it.
So I argued the office was a brand project. Nobody had asked for that.
The decision was to make the office from Washington rather than in Washington.
That sounds like a small distinction and it isn't. It settles everything downstream: whether the art is bought or commissioned, whether the rooms are named or numbered, whether someone walking in for the first time learns anything about where they are.
A room called 3B could be in any building in any city. That was the whole argument.
THE MOVE
The atrium screen during the tournament: the same event creative, built for the room rather than the wall.
THE PHOTOGRAPHY
The club had little photography of its own. Every event had to be illustrated with a stock image which is why the creative described events instead of showing this one. I pushed to put a photographer at events. It wasn't in the budget and it wasn't anyone's ask, it was an argument I kept making until it happened. Within a season the club had a library of its own rooms, its own bartenders, its own crowd. That single operational change did more for how the brand felt than any typographic decision I could have made.
THE ANNIVERSARY
The one night that didn’t have to look like the other events.
The Caviar, Cocktails and Champagne invitation for the Paramount Club first anniversary.
Everything else on the digital signs is a fast read, someone passing a sign on the way to the elevator, three seconds, maybe four. The first anniversary wasn't that. It was an invitation. People were deciding whether to dress for it, and the creative had to carry that decision.
So the piece breaks the system on purpose. The sans headline gives way to a script font. The image drops to near-black and the only color left in the frame is candlelight on glass. The wordmark stays exactly where it always sits, which is what keeps it the club, and not a different brand.
It moved the register from come to the café to you're invited, and it became the reference the club's creative worked toward afterwards.
Partner activations and sub-brand work: Paramount Wellness residencies, Rooftop Garden Cooking Class and a Sir Davis whisky tasting
A system earns its keep when it stretches without tearing. The same frame carried a month-long tournament campaign across print, café and screen; partner activations that had to give a third party real estate without surrendering the club's voice; and a wellness sub-brand with a register of its own.
THE RANGE
One campaign, three placements: Café promotion, RSVP for Trivia Night, game-day screen.
50
0
rebuilds, evolved, never replaced
in-house photo library, built from nothing
events carried on one system