C2 Concepts is a firm of workplace designers with studios in Glasgow and London. I was commissioned to advise on the strategy and write the content for an overhaul of its marketing collateral – including its website and brochure.
As C2 Concepts is a design company, the website is visually-led. The photographs allow the design to speak for itself, and so the copy is intended to provide the relevant business context.
Heineken, Sales and marketing headquarters, London
Office fit out
Heineken was the official beer and cider supplier to the London 2012 Olympics. To maximise the commercial opportunities offered by the Games, the company decided to create a new sales and marketing headquarters in the heart of London’s West End.
The brief was to provide a flexible workspace as well as state of the art meeting, presentation and hospitality spaces, which would showcase Heineken’s various drinks brands. These include John Smith’s, Foster’s and Bulmers cider.
Bold wall graphics, lighting features and customised manifestations on the glass partitions explicitly promote the company’s products. But the design also makes more subtle reference to Heineken’s heritage through the use of materials reclaimed from the brewing industry such as polished copper and aged oak. This richly patinated timber forms a backdrop to the central bar and the glass feature staircase that curves around it.
C2 has also designed
Heineken’s Edinburgh office and a post-Covid reorganisation of the London HQ.
Barclays Bank, Wavertree, Manchester, New Delhi and Pune
Workplace concept. Office and contact centre fit outs
Hearts and Minds is C2’s competition-winning workplace concept for Barclays, created originally for the upgrade of the bank’s Wavertree contact centre in Liverpool. C2 was one of 13 design firms invited to submit proposals for the project. The brief was to devise a workplace model that could be rolled out globally.
Designed to encourage communication, Hearts and Minds also provides a comfortable, flexible workspace that can accommodate changing team sizes and a variety of management styles. Its adaptability has been proved through several further C2 projects for Barclays.
At the bank’s new Manchester office – which accommodates over 1,000 contact centre and support staff as well as a regional Barclays’ Academy – C2 modified the concept for the office areas. And at offices in New Delhi and Pune in India, Hearts and Minds was tweaked to reflect local working practices.