Pinterest London: Workplace Branded Scheme

An eclectic, hyper-local workplace for Pinterest’s London offices, imagined as four distinct corners of the city.

Location: London, UK
Size: 29,600 sqft

Overview

The City, Mapped

Pinterest's new London workplace is grounded in playful, creative discovery - a celebration of what makes London special. From world-renowned tailors and late-night chicken shops, to grand clubhouses and modern coffee bars, the space is designed as a cultural map of the city it sits in, with every room taking its theme from where it stands. This is a space with a seemingly endless array of creativity, quirkiness and fun beneath its surface, and one that rewards exploration over and over again.

The Brief

Unmistakably London

The main brief asked for a space that was unmistakably London. Deeper than classic clichés like phone boxes, black cabs, and skylines. Specific enough that a Londoner would easily recognise the references, but generous enough that everyone else would still enjoy it. The space demands a raucous, colourful, moodboard-like combination of what makes Pinterest and the UK capital unique.

For the wayfinding, Pinterest wanted the stained glass of local pubs infused into the design. Their wayfinding system is consistent worldwide, with subtle differences in design that tie each scheme to its locale. They use the same logic, and the same hierarchy, wherever you happen to be working that week, but add a layer of creativity to ground each office in its surrounding context.

"Alongside the Pinterest team, we coined the phrase ‘the magic layer’; design that considers genuine authenticity, with hidden details for the local team to explore."

Becca Davis, Lead Designer at Acrylicize

Our Approach

Four Corners

The office floorplate divides into North, South, East and West London, each zone sitting where it physically belongs. Every quadrant carries a colour and an icon designed to sit inside Pinterest's global system without bending it: a red fox for the north, a blue market stall for the south, a yellow spray can for the east, a green crown for the west.

Hidden messages, markers and moments are ingrained in every design - each room has a hand-crafted narrative and a story to tell, that revolves around Pinterest as a platform for discovery and rewards anyone who chooses to look a little closer.

A look at the design process and proposals

The main arrival space takes its creative cues from Hampstead Heath. At its centre, a bespoke hanging logo sign sets the tone on entry, its mottled glass surrounds catching the light like the Heath's bathing ponds. Around it, glazing in the reception area gathers icons and motifs from across the entire scheme - foxes, trains, chicken shopfronts, pub signage - into a single layer.

The East side of the workplace is hand-pasted, screened and stitched to feel like you’re in Shoreditch, Hackney, or Dalston.

Wheatpaste gig posters advertise real venues with invented line-ups - the DJ names belonging to the Acrylicize and Pinterest project teams. A printmaker's studio holds screenprinted posters and the screens that made them. Pinterest's values are hand-embroidered onto studded vintage jackets, framed without glass so they stay tactile - all done in-house at our London studio. Three meeting rooms have their names and logos inspired by Columbia Road shopfronts. Another room is imagined as a classic chicken shop, designed down to the paper bags.

Pinterest London is a workplace literally bursting with possibility.

The West side is made to measure, interspersed with traditional West London grandeur, designed by hand from start to finish. A meeting room is designed as a clubhouse dining room, with hand-drawn illustrations across bespoke, Victorian flocked wallpapers - look closely, and you'll spot jellied eels, sticky toffee pudding, HP Sauce, and other classic West London motifs. Elsewhere, a coffee bar sign has its look borrowed from Daunt Books - a renowned bookshop which shelves by country rather than category, on the principle that discovery beats classification.

Across the rest of the West side, a room logo is drawn from one of the world's oldest hatters, with conkers and top hats worked into the wall graphics. Vintage Savile Row clothing patterns, sourced by our designers and redrawn as Pinterest artworks, are draped across the walls, and the sights, sounds and energy of Portobello Road are brought to life via custom graphics. Finally, a pub-themed space - the Fitzy Prince, named after the famous Fitzroy Tavern - has a bespoke typeface tiled into its entrance floor.