Tile Art as Part of an Interior Branding Strategy

Interior branding needs to be part of your business’s interior design and marketing plans.

Seyie Putsure, principal of Seyie Desig, says:

“Interior Branding is a tool to communicate the essence of your company's brand identity through the design of its physical environment ... Good design is no longer considered an elitist idea, but rather is now an integral part of a sound business strategy.”

We here at Planar Creations couldn’t agree more - interior branding is an essential part of any marketing strategy and the tools to help businesses with interior branding have long been too expensive.

5 elements of a well-branded interior

Seyie listed 5 elements of a well-branded interior:

1. “Using your company's logo, a trademark design element or color throughout as an interior detail.”
2. “Reflecting your company's core personality in your interior environment, which encompasses both aesthetic and ambiance.”
3. “If your company has a presence in more than one physical environment, your design aesthetic should always be consistent, but not necessarily identical.”
4. “When clients walk into your spa, retail boutique or office, you want them to have a memorable experience, as well as transact business.”
5. “Paying careful attention to how your clients connect with your business through their various senses - hearing, touch, sight, smell and taste.”

Planar Creations’ tile art can help business brand their interiors and make a memorable impression on their customers - just ask small business owner Gabe Deliruiso.

Deliruiso, owner of Napoli Pizza, says:

“Putting our logo in our new floor was a great decision. Not only does it add to the decor but the customers love talking about it.”

The real business value of commercial tile art is the ability to create something your customers will want to talk about.

4 ways to use tile art for interior branding

There are 4 ways custom tile designs can help your business:

1. You can arrange to have your business’s logo designed in tile.
2. Choosing from different tile types and colours means you can project the right aesthetic and create the right ambiance.
3. Like Gabe said, it will give your customers something new to talk about.
4. Having individually customized pieces will help you make minor adjustments if you have more than one location.

Learn more

Traditionally, interior branding using tile art has been too expensive - we are changing this. We don’t think that interior branding should be too expensive - it needs to be something businesses large and small can use and have access to.

Contact us to learn more.


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6 Things to Remember When Designing Tile Art

Tile art is a way to express yourself and beautify your space.

Planar Creations has a range of ready-to-use artwork to choose from, but many of our clients come to us because of our ability to create unique designs, with unheard of speed and simplicity. In order to take advantage of this ability to customize and personalize, it helps to have a general idea of the design process.

This is helpful both for artists and designers who will be actually creating tile art, but also for home or business owners who will be guiding a designer to create their own special work.

So no matter what role you're playing in the design process, we've put together 6 tips that will help you improve your experience with tile art.

 

1. Size

Generally speaking the total size of your custom tile design, or your canvass, is one of three sizes. It can be 24” by 24”, 36" by 36" or 18” by 36”. These aren’t the only sizes that you can work with, but they are some of the more common ones. If it helps, work with these in mind.

 

2. Build a puzzle

Instead of thinking of tile art like you would think of a painting, think of it like a completed puzzle. It will have precision cut shapes neatly fitting together.

 

3. Think shapes, not lines

Most people who think of art think of a series of lines, but that’s not the way a custom tile design works. Each shape in your piece must have a single colour or texture that could be closely replicated using stone.

 

4. Don’t forget the grout

Think of how tile looks when on a floor or wall. There must be spaces between each piece of the design, surrounding each shape, called grout lines.

In practice, gaps are always left between tiles and filled in with a material called grout. You should include grout lines between pieces. Preferred width of grout line is 1/8”, although you may vary the lines from 1/4” to 1/16” for effect when required.

Grout lines will play a large role in fine details, and can be helpful in achieving certain effects. Have some fun experimenting with them.

 

5. Don’t think small

Extreme detail or very small pieces do not work when designing with tile. The smallest pieces should definitely be larger than 1/4”. Remember that each piece must be cut out, and handled from the factory, all the way to the point where it is laid on a floor or wall.

 

6. Turn strokes into shapes

When designing your custom tile art, make it personal to you. Find images that mean something to you. Remember: You are only limited by your imagination. Have fun with it.
We hope these are helpful tips. If you are looking for some inspiration, check out our tile art gallery or contact us to see what we can help you create .

Rob Parsons is Planar Creations’ tile art consultant. 

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Our Tile Art Grabbed East Coast Living Magazine's Attention

During the Creative Economy Conference in Sydney, Nova Scotia we had a chance to meet East Coast Living Magazine's editor Suzanne Rent.

She toured our facility, checked out our tile art and it has grabbed her attention.

Last week I learned about Planar Creations and its custom tile work! So beautiful and affordable! goo.gl/4kHja @planarcreations
— East Coast Living (@EastCoastLiving) April 1, 2013

3 Take-Aways From the Creative Economy Conference

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The Creative Economy Conference hosted by the Cape Breton Centre for Craft and Design was informative, inspiring, and entertaining.

Staff from Planar Creations attended the entire conference and we think there were three important lessons discussed at the conference.

 

Collaboration expands opportunities

On the first day of the conference, we heard about the role collaboration plays in the creative process. We were told a story about how a collaborative project forced two artists to use new mediums and helped one break out of a slump.

Community collaboration. Use other mediums to market your work. #CreativeEconomy
— Alex Musial (@Alex_Musial) March 27, 2013

Listening to the conference’s participants, it became clear that collaboration demands five things:

1. Clearly defined goals. If you don’t set goals, your collaborative efforts will be messy, time consuming and defeating. A successful collaboration begins by answering the question: What can we do together that we cannot do alone?
2. Transcend a parochial outlook. Like the artists who were challenged by new mediums, you cannot let your efforts be too narrowly focused. A failure to rise above our traditional limitations and set aside our own short-term goals will mean a project is destined to fail.
3. Open and frequent communication. When a group of people starts a new project and enters uncomfortable territory, those involved need to keep one another up-to-date, communicate honestly, and discuss issues openly.
4. Share what you learn. If you are brave enough to embark on a collaborative endeavour, others are sitting back and thinking about it - they want to, but they might be intimidated by what it demands. By sharing your lessons and your experience you will be able to empower and support others.
5. Support is needed. Having an organization that helps move people into collaborative relationships and through projects is extremely important - it increases the chances of success. Throughout the conference we heard stories about how the Cape Breton Centre for Craft and Design plays such a role in the local community.

 

Creativity requires failure and quiet mind

On the second day of the conference, Marcato Digital CEO Darren Gallop openly shared what he called “failures.” He said where he is at professionally is not where he planned to be and added that the original plans for his company and technology changed dramatically.

What was clear from Darren’s story is that different career and marketing challenges sparked his creativity - he was faced with a problem and thought of solutions that did not previously exist.


Creative types and entrepreneurs must make mistakes and must fail because only through that failure can they find new methods and opportunities.

On day three, Gavin Sheppard said that, creativity can only happen with a quiet mind.

There are multiple ways to get your creative juices flowing. For starters, you need to be relaxed, but not too relaxed. If you are too wound up or too laid back your ability to consider multiple possibilities is reduced and so is your ability to identify and solve problems.

You need to challenge yourself to enter into unfamiliar territory. Explore unfamiliar places or try, like the artists on day one mentioned, working with unfamiliar materials. People use the worn out saying “think outside the box,” but studies performed show that:

“When people literally — that is, physically — embody these metaphors, they generate more creative ideas for solving problems.”

 

Creativity is not innovation

Creativity is not innovation, innovation brings creativity to life.

Believing the two are the same is an understandable mistake because the two concepts are so closely related. Creativity is identifying a problem and coming up with an idea, a way to solve the problem. Innovation is figuring how to bring that idea to life and, as Doug Milburn from Protocase said, “It creates economic value.”

When thinking about the difference between creativity and innovation, think of Eddison:

"Innovation is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." 

I don’t know if his numbers are right, but the sentiment is bang on.

 

Your turn

We surely didn’t pick up on all of the big messages from the Creative Economy Conference. What did we miss? What do you think of the ideas above? Please share your thoughts and comments with us below.

Stephen Moore is the Vice President, Sales and Marketing for Planar Creations. Follow him on Twitter.