Publisher’s airy new studio bucks the wfh trend with fresh coffee and no Zoom meetings
An airy new studio space for Pigment Productions is bucking the recent trend for working from home, with the publisher finding designers actually prefer going into the office.
“One of the frequent noises I’m hearing among design studio people is that wfh is creating all sorts of issues, and the trend is moving back toward studio working,” creative director Martin Powderly told PG Buzz, “so, at Pigment, we’ve just moved into a bigger studio.
“No doubt I’m old-school but, arriving into the camaraderie of a warm spacious studio cluttered with Macs, books, colour swatches, trend walls and the smell of fresh coffee beats another team Zoom meeting hands down!”
Following on from the Covid pandemic where everyone having to stay home morphed into anyone who could should work there too, it became the norm across many industries but has had a significant knock-on effect, particularly in city centres and larger towns where retailers and the hospitality sector who catered for workers have been struggling.
With many people having to work from the sofa or sitting on their bed due to a shortage of space in the home while also navigating the interruptions of home life, the Harrogate-based publisher’s move is actually right of the moment.
While a survey by the Royal Society For Public Health (RSPH) found more people feel wfh is better for their health and wellbeing at 45%, people who switched from the office as a result of Covid had experienced health and wellbeing impacts, with 67% being feeling less connected to colleagues, 46% taking less exercise, 39% developing musculoskeletal problems, and 37% reporting disturbed sleep.
The RSPH survey showed people who live with multiple housemates were more likely to think that working from home was worse for their health and wellbeing (41%), compared to people who live on their own (29%) or with just their partner (24%).
However, the vast majority of people didn’t want to go back to working in an office full time, with 74% saying they wanted to split their time between home working and in the office.
Martin said wfh offers real upsides in saving time, money and energy avoiding the commute, planning your day in your own environment with your own music, seeing more of your family or taking kids to school.
But he added: “Many find that team-working in a studio often brings a terrific sense of purpose, more focus on this week’s emergency, a faster pace, shared skills, greater friendships, and, importantly, it allows us at 5pm to leave work at work!
“At Pigment a lot of us live very locally and, while we use wfh flexibility where required, we’re fortunate to have maintained many pre-pandemic working practices with most staff present most of the time.
“Do we all have the focus and motivation to plough through workloads and ignore the distractions inherent with wfh? Undoubtedly some do, but lockdown taught me that I don’t.”
