Designing Office Spaces That Work for the Post-Covid World With Francis Court of WONDERSPHERE
Introduction
The design of spaces, online and off.
In this episode of the Nonprofit Thrive podcast, Ben Freda welcomes Francis Court, Founder and CEO of WONDERSPHERE.
Francis’s journey has taken him from architecture to web design – and, in one notable case, back again.
He describes the case of a peculiar project project that started as a traditional web design, and eventually turned into the redesign of a foundation’s office space. And, early reveal: they are not as different as you might think.
Among many other things, Ben and Francis discuss how digital and physical spaces can strengthen connections between a company’s missions and the people involved in fulfilling those missions. Francis shares his journey from an architect frustrated by conventional office design to a visionary transforming nonprofit spaces. He also explores the synergy between online presence and office architecture, showing how coherence between them can amplify your message and mission.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [4:44] Francis Court explains how creativity and art combine to create powerful narratives for nonprofits
- [9:15] Why audience needs are more important than an organization’s self-image
- [12:51] The significance of storytelling in communicating a nonprofit’s legacy and purpose
- [16:32] Reimagining office spaces to boost community and collaboration post-pandemic
- [18:27] Designing offices to support a remote or hybrid workforce
- [25:32] How to transform traditional office layouts into communal hubs
- [29:21] The strategy behind hosting external events in-house for nonprofits
- [32:43] The trend of incorporating nature and greenery into interior spaces
- [40:40] What is the connection between website design and physical space planning?
In this episode…
An office design should strengthen the connection between an organization’s mission and the people dedicated to achieving it. But can design foster a unique culture that transcends mere aesthetics?
Francis Court, a space designer, emphasizes the possibility. He argues that office design creates a powerful narrative embodying a nonprofit’s mission, with a clear connection between website design and physical space planning. Both disciplines require a deep understanding of how to create an engaging, functional, and mission-driven experience. By thoughtfully designing office spaces, nonprofits can ensure their environment supports their mission, foster a unique culture, and inspire everyone to work toward a common goal.
In this episode of the Nonprofit Thrive podcast, Ben Freda welcomes Francis Court, Founder and CEO of WONDERSPHERE. They discuss how digital and physical spaces can strengthen connections between a company’s missions and the people involved in fulfilling those missions. Francis shares his journey from an architect frustrated by conventional office design to a visionary transforming nonprofit spaces. He also explores the synergy between online presence and office architecture, showing how coherence between them can amplify your message and mission.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Ben Freda on LinkedIn
- BFC Digital
- Francis Court on LinkedIn
- WONDERSPHERE
- “Communicating in Public Health With Molly Garrone of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health” on the Nonprofit Thrive podcast
- “There’s No Such Thing as the General Public With Eric Brown of Brownbridge Strategies” on the Nonprofit Thrive podcast
Quotable Moments:
- “Building communities is about emotionalizing what you do, not just narrating dry facts.”
- “A good office design can radically change how an organization feels and operates.”
- “Never underestimate the power of creating a home away from home for your staff.”
- “Design is not about fitting into a predefined box; it’s about storytelling and connection.”
- “Turning a traditional office space into a living narrative of your work can be revolutionary.”
Action Steps:
- Evaluate your nonprofit’s digital and physical spaces for congruence with your mission: Ensuring coherence in design elements can create a seamless identity that resonates with both your team and audience.
- Embrace the history and narrative of your organization in your space design: Retelling your nonprofit’s story within its space can inspire and remind staff of the broader impact of their work.
- Consider the office as a multifunctional hub for your activities: Making the office a venue for events and gatherings can save resources and draw people closer to your cause.
- Integrate elements of home and comfort into the workspace: Spaces reflecting a domestic feel can boost morale and encourage staff to collaborate more effectively.
- Adopt a user-centric approach to design, both online and offline: Focusing on audience needs when designing your nonprofit’s space or website ensures it serves its intended purpose effectively.
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by BFC Digital.
At BFC Digital, we help nonprofit organizations thrive on the web so they can improve the world.
Our team of creative and tech experts understands that an online presence can help foundations and organizations accomplish their missions. That’s where we come in. Over the last decade, we’ve advised our clients on web design, front- and back-end development, and tech support.
We’re committed to supporting a select set of clients who continually inspire us with their vision for a better world.
To learn more on how BFC Digital can assist you in realizing your organization’s mission, visit bfcdigital.com, email us at info@bfcdigtal.com, or call 646-450-2236 today!
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:00
Welcome to Nonprofit Thrive, a podcast where we learn from the humans who are helping nonprofits succeed in the digital world. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Ben Freda 0:16
Hello and welcome to Nonprofit Thrive, where we share the stories of leaders in the nonprofit space. I’m talking about the underappreciated folks who have given their lives not just to the pursuit of profit but also to their desire to change the world for the better, and the stories of people who help them do it, the designers, the coders, et cetera. And along the way, we’re also learning about this ecosystem and about the people and the tools and the ideas and strategies and how to stay sane while we do it. Examples of other episodes that we’ve recorded. Listen to a show we recently did with Molly Garrone of the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. She manages communications for the Choices Project, which is a program that does research and advocacy to address childhood obesity. She talked about how she does that, including how she runs a community of practitioners and shares ideas about how to get work done, or listen to the show we did with Eric Brown of Brownbridge Strategies, who is responsible for today’s guest. He introduced me to today’s guest, where we talked about his history in Hollywood and in DC, and as a communication specialist for foundations and nonprofits. Fascinating episode. Today we’re going to do something different. We usually talk about digital technology, but today we’re going to talk about that, and not only the digital space, but the physical space. And really excited to bring on today’s guest. Before I do that, though, I do need to read our sponsor message, our episode. In fact, all of our episodes are sponsored by BFC Digital. That is, surprise. My company where helps nonprofits thrive on the web. Suppose you work at a nonprofit or a foundation or another type of social change organization. In that case, I’m sure you’re aware that unless you’re doing a big old, chunky project, 10s of 1000s of dollars, it can be difficult to find a reputable, kind, responsive help for your website. That is what we do at BFC Digital. We help our clients succeed on the web by being the web colleagues you wish you had at your own organization sitting right next to you that you could tap on the shoulder and ask, Why isn’t this working? We can fix bugs. We can help you evolve your web presence. We can design new campaign pages. We can integrate that new, fancy donation system that your fundraiser is so excited about onto your site, and we do it all without ever asking you to fill out a dreaded support ticket because support tickets are the worst. Every time you fill out a support ticket, some angel loses its wings. Go to BFC digital.com to learn more. So today, very excited to have on the show Francis Court of WONDERSPHERE. He is a veteran of architecture and web design and has done work for foundations and nonprofits. He recently did a redesign of an office space for one of his clients. And one of the things I want to talk to him about is modern office design. So many of us are thinking about how we are going to manage the world post covid. Are we going to have remote work? Are we going to have in-person work? And if you have in-person work or hybrid work. How can we design the office space, the physical space to communicate what we want to communicate and to effectuate working together with our colleagues in the best way possible? He has a little bit of history on Francis. He is the CEO of WONDERSPHERE, which is a branding design and communications agency based in London and Chicago. He worked as an architect. He’s traveled extensively in the USA, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, Hong Kong, and Dubai. He’s done multidisciplinary branding projects across all kinds of sectors, including nonprofits. Francis, thank you so much for joining us.
Francis Court 4:18
Ben, thank you. What an introduction. Really, really happy to be talking to you today.
Ben Freda 4:23
Man, I could only get through 5% of the introduction I wanted. But Frances, I want to talk about this office-based thing. But before you know what we try and do on the show is just get a little bit of an intro into you, who you are, and how you got to where you are today. So what did you want to do as a kid? I assume you grew up in the UK.
Francis Court 4:44
Actually, I grew up in South Africa, so I went to school in South Africa and university in Cape Town, and I’d always wanted to be an artist or be involved with with art or creativity. In some way, was never really sure what to do. And so when I finished school, I started an architecture degree at the University of Cape Town, which was which was great, a fantastic education. And I carried on. I moved to the UK. I finished the degree in the second, second degree, which makes up the architecture degree in the UK, in the UK, and went for my first job at the age of 28 and was very surprised at the opportunities that were available for architects and what I would be doing. And seemed, it seemed, I was slightly disillusioned having grafted my way through, through two degrees, just I hadn’t imagined that I would have studied for this long and that my first job would be to, you know, detail the bathroom fixtures In an office block. I imagine doing something much more glamorous, much more engaging, and much more meaningful. Actually, I guess, like everything, I ended up, by coincidence, working for an agency that looked after Ford Motor Company and all of their global design work. And that was that was insanely fulfilling to be involved in that. Because not only were you involved in the design, but you were seeing design having an effect and making and, you know, having an immediate effect in the work that we’re doing. I traveled a lot with work, which, again, I think is a great sort of eye open in terms of understanding different cultures and the way people approach the same problem creatively in different different parts of the world and in different cultures. And I loved, I loved the whole experience, and it probably set the tone for everything that followed because it’s that sense of curiosity, that sense of wanting to understand how the world works, to be involved in in in using design as a, as a force for good, to change organizations, to change businesses, to change the way people think. And I was hooked. So after that, there was, there was no chance of ever designing a bathroom fixture, or it was, it was always going to be something different each time. And that’s what I love about the work that we do, is just that variety, that the variety of the diet that we have is, is what makes the work that we do so so interesting and inspiring.
Ben Freda 7:41
So were you? Were you doing architecture work? How did you end up doing, like, sort of web design stuff? Did you do that through the Ford Motor Company thing as well? Or was that sort of separate from that?
Francis Court 7:52
So within those sort of the creative world, you start off as a, as a specialist 3d designer, and then, yeah, as you, as you work through that, you start to to work with discipline, different disciplines. So there’s bits of filmmaking, and then there’s web and there’s this graphic design work, there’s print work, there’s there’s live, live events. And so slowly you start to understand this, this, what I would call this joined-up world of or this toolbox of being able to communicate. So, the agency I was with until 2006 was effectively the only employee I’ve ever had. They were very, what they would call media neutral, and I guess that’s a bit of a buzzword, and everyone will talk about it now, but they would always approach, you know, the client’s problem or the design brief without a solution in mind. It might be a website, it could be a live event, it could be a print campaign, it could be a could be a TV commercial, right? And that type of thinking really resonated, and I think that’s probably the way we we still like to think about work for our clients. We never try to fit it into a particular solution but rather understand what it is they’re trying to achieve and then come at it from a very different point of view.
Ben Freda 9:15
Yeah, I had I actually heard you. I don’t know if I’m giving something away here, but I heard you on a different podcast, and it was Eric Brown’s podcast, and you were talking about your work with Spencer. And I remember the Spencer Foundation woman, whose name escapes me, but seemed very nice, um, said that they were they wanted to get in. They were working on a new website. They wanted to hire an agency to do their new website. And they had interviewed a bunch of people. And then you came in and connected with them about about the problem and stuff. And she said that, that you guys went away and then you sent them like a video. Do you know what I mean, you sent them a montage video? And we do website projects too. I’ve never thought about sending someone a video after the initial meeting because we’re just a website company. We, you know, that’s what we do so but I thought that was so interesting, because. You are clearly thinking about design, not about your design globally, and not just about the website. But is that something you commonly will do?
Francis Court 10:08
I think so. I’ll do a quick plug for my wonderful clients at Spencer So Emily Crow Phillips, who’s the Marketing Communications Manager, and Liz Carrick, who’s the Chief of Staff, and they’ve been amazing clients, because as exactly as you, as you suggest that that first introduction to them, they’ve always given us so much latitude to tackle a problem without defining it in a box. And that’s been really helpful. I think, when we first started, when we first got asked to do the website for Spencer, it was clear to us that this was an organization with an amazing, amazingly rich story, you know, 50 years the story of Lyle Spencer, what he achieved in his, in his life, and the legacy that he left, and it seemed to me like a lot of foundations that they were lost in the corporate world of and I think that the reason that we did that video was we felt that it was important. Spencer always spoke about building communities, and building communities is not something that you do with, with, with, like the right words, but dry with, with dry facts. Building communities is about building connections. It’s about emotionalizing what it is that they do. And so the film that we produced was, was just to show them what Spencer would look like as an organization that they knew and were very familiar with but when you started to think about it through a different lens, and you emotionalized the way that they the work that they were doing, and the impact of the work, and how many lives it had changed over a long period of time. So that was, that was the way that we approached. It was just to try and set the tone for a different way of talking. You know, Spencer, at that stage, I guess, like many foundations, were trapped in in their name, as it were, Spencer Foundation. And people weren’t calling them the Spencer Foundation. They were calling them Spencer. And that was, that was something that concerned them. And I think part of the work that we did was, was just say, Look, you know Spencer, it’s, you know, it’s okay to be Spencer. It’s fine. The Foundation could be your surname, but it gave it allowed them to just relax a little bit and talk about the work that they did and how they engage with people, and how they build communities in a much more relaxed way, in a much more sensational way, rather than through this, this wall of a website that was that put up these barriers and said, You have to be formal and you have to do it this way, you have to do it that way. So I think that was the approach with Spencer initially,
Ben Freda 12:51
it’s funny. I think we’re kind of lucky when we work for nonprofits or foundations too because the stories can be so good, right? It’s not like, I’m trying to sell shoes, and the story is like, Oh, you will dunk a basketball or whatever. Like, are the stories that they have are like, Man, this homeless kid said, you know, it’s, it’s so great, so, and I noticed that you guys try, and that was something that she said too, is that you guys talk stories a lot,
Francis Court 13:17
I think so it’s, it’s part of what we do. And I think when you think about organizations with a lot of history and a legacy, it’s hard for them to let go of anything, so they hold on to everything. And so for us, I think the task is easy because part of, part of what we do is to just reduce, to simplify, to say that is important, but it’s not important to this audience, or that’s important to remember, but now’s not the time to talk about it. And so I think, in that sense, just helping organizations to simplify, to rationalize, to focus on what who they’re talking to, rather than what they would like to talk about, which is a big distinction, is the way that we approach Spencer and other clients as well.
Ben Freda 14:11
You know, I think you’re totally right. I mean, one of the things we’re doing website projects, the first thing we’re trying to do is identify who’s the audience and what do they want, right? Not, not, what is the organization about, which is a different thing? I mean, the organization thinks it knows what it’s about, which they probably do, but, but it’s not like they are the ones going to the website, you know, like, like, the people that are going to the website are a different set of people, you know, and they are looking for something when they need something, yeah, yeah. So I think you’re right, especially with that’s interesting. What you say about organizations with long histories, they have so much they want to hang on to and impart and communicate that might be separate from what the audience needs. I
Francis Court 14:52
think so. And I think it’s quite liberating, and I imagine that perhaps we. We get it slightly wrong. I know we get it slightly wrong, but the most important thing is to, is to, is to reduce down and try and try and hit the right audience in with the right messaging. And I think for Spencer, or most of the clients the grant making, the majority of visitors to the website are interested in the grants. It just that’s just makes sense. And so anything that doesn’t make that process of accessing the grants as easy and as simple as possible is just a barrier, really,
Ben Freda 15:35
yeah, yeah, right. And that, that is audience number one. We’ve also found that, like for foundations, particularly or nonprofits that are giving grants. Audience number two is often a very small percentage of people who they want. They want to partner with them to give them money. You know they want. They want funding from larger foundations or larger organizations. So you’re also that’s sort of audience number two. The numbers on that are going to be tiny, but the importance of each number is going to be high. So you want to make sure that whatever you’re doing, you know, speaks to those people as well, at least the level of sophistication, for instance, that with which you’re doing these things is reflected for those folks, so that they don’t think that the money that they’re giving is going to be wasted. Exactly. No, that makes perfect sense. Yes, interesting. So can you talk a little bit? Because I do want to get into the office thing. So you had a web design project with Spencer. You did that project, and can you talk about how did that end up being, also an office space redesign?
Francis Court 16:32
Yeah, I’m going to have to try and remember the sequence of events. What I remember about doing the website with Spencer, I laughed. I really laughed during your introduction because, you know, your comments about tickets and making things simple and easy and accessible for clients, I guess because we traditionally haven’t been a website agency. I always found, as an outsider, outsider that it was such an impenetrable world of jargon and and so frustrating, I mean, so frustrating for clients. And when we started doing websites, and Spencer was probably one of one of the early websites that we did, I was determined, whatever it took, we were going to have fun, and we were going to make it enjoyable. And we were lucky enough that Eric Brown was, Emily was on, had just started, and Spencer and she, she was going on maternity leave, and so she said, Well, look, I’ll be back in six months. And can you finish the website by then? Which was, which is the best brief we could have, we could have ever had, but Eric, Eric actually kept the US kids in check and made sure that we did everything that we said we wouldn’t, and wander off and and start, you know, playing with things we weren’t meant to. But I remember Eric did come back at the end of that project, and I whether I have it on an email or somewhere, and he just said, Thank you for making that fun and and that for me was, you know, was, was the the end of that project, was this, that it was, it was fun. It was enjoyable, isn’t it? That is awesome. That is awesome to be enjoyable. Like, yeah, you know, telling the story of an organization and bringing out their personality should be fun. Why should it be painful, right? Right? I
Ben Freda 18:27
mean, we think that all the time that that is kind of our reason Detroit as well, is to make the website, but then also, as we’re doing support for websites, people should be excited to have a site that they can use to do cool shit. You know what I mean? I mean allowed to swear on this podcast, apparently. But right? Like you have this great website, and let’s say you’re starting a new campaign or a new program, or you have a subset of donors you want to appeal to, you should be excited to fire up a new landing page to put the designs on there, and it should work, and it should be cool. And you, I’m sure you’re going to struggle with part of it, so call us, and we’ll help you, and it’ll be fun. But that is not people’s thought process. When they get into websites, they get they’re immediately frustrated. Things are hard. The developer they’re going to talk to is not going to want to talk to them. They’re not going to get back to them, you know, first off and then, and then, when they do, it’s going to be frustrating. And if you say something doesn’t look right. They’re going to try and convince you that actually it does when you know it doesn’t. You know what I mean, yeah, it’s a hugely frustrating experience. We’re really trying to change that and just be friendly normal people, which is, yeah, which I think you totally get too, because we’ve all had this experience of dealing with crappy developers
Francis Court 19:36
that are frustrated. And most, I mean, most other things. I spent a lot of time in the States. Most other things are just so customer-friendly and usable. And there was this thing called website building. Every time you mentioned it to someone, you’d see their faces, you know, they would drop as if this was just this awful experience. But anyway, I think Ben, your question was, how. We go from that? How do we go from doing the websites? I think that perhaps because of the website work, Spencer had other projects around the website, printed work, other branded work, and they said to us, could you have a look at this. So we started working with them. And I think we were very fortunate to to to agree an ongoing retainer relationship with them, to support them with with branding, marketing communications, design creativity. It was, it was quite a it was quite a broad brief that we had to sort of slot into their organization. As I see it, at least, I feel like it’s, you know, I feel like I work there in many ways, get, get under the skin, understand them, and help them to to to do whatever they needed to do, in terms of putting the message across about what Spencer was and their mission to to to fund education, research and to and so we were lucky. And and just prior to this, that awful covid conversation, Spencer had had started talking about moving out of their current facility on Michigan Avenue, and the lease was coming up, and they were thinking about it. And of course, Spencer went to architects, as they would. And they went to, you know, they ran a tender. And I think we, I started making a few noises with Spencer, you know, advocating that we would, you know, could we get involved and, and I it took, it took a while. It took over to come and Spencer, I think we’re at a point where they were, they they were a little bit frustrated with the process of of the design process. And I think Liz came to me and expressed some frustrations that the layouts weren’t the way they wanted them and and so that was just the opportunity. There was like someone just opened the door a little bit for us to get involved. And obviously my, you know, personally, my background is architecture. We’ve done a lot of experiential design, and I think particularly, generally, in branding terms. I think environment spaces, unless you’re retailing and you’re talking about a shop, environment is neglected in the, in the overall conversation. So, for us, the way that we went to Spencer with this was to say that Spencer’s all about facilitating community. Yes, what just, what does your office do in terms of facilitating community? Is, what is it that it does well I think the answer that was, was probably quite a short list that it didn’t facilitate community in the in the way they spoke about. So it was the opportunity for us to take the floor plan. The building was pretty traditional, you know, American office block, Big Core in the middle of the building, and then it’s on the 16th floor. So it had amazing views and cubicles around the outside, but it didn’t function in my mind as a hub for an organization with a soul. The middle of the building was completely dead. It’s where you arrived. There were lifts and services, and the first thing that we did was almost turn the building the other way around, so So open up the inside so that the Spencer had a heart and a soul that had a central focus, and that was, that was an important thing to do, I think, from just a using design to to to make the organization feel like it, there was A, you know, a central point of, of sort of shared, shared hub. The other thing that we did, sorry, oh,
Ben Freda 23:46
no, I would just to ask you about that. So, and by you, do you mean like this, the floor is kind of a square, and you’re talking about the center of that area,
Francis Court 23:56
correct? So, yeah. So, so the way a modern building like, like that would work is obviously the prime in the olden days. You know, the prime real estate was the corner offices and all the officers that had to have great views. And, of course, they’re on Michigan Avenue, and they’re fantastic views from the building. And the center is just the lifts and the services and the bathrooms and the storerooms and all of the facilities that that you that an office like that would require I see. So that’s, it’s dead, it’s, it’s completely dead, right? There’s no I
Ben Freda 24:28
see. So the way you would navigate, like you would go around the edges, really, to see people, meet people, whatever, and then the middle part is, like, you go to the bathroom there.
Francis Court 24:36
Yeah, I so I was, I always said to Spencer, in your in your office, because it’s a it’s a circular loop. If everyone walks in the same direction, you could never, you may say that the whole day, and never bump into into any of your colleagues. It just seemed like such a strange layout. And the other thing, of course, with it, was that it had, it had it had a clear head to the you know. Head and body to the to the organization. So all the meeting rooms in the kitchen and the and and the, you know, the senior, the senior members of staff, all in one area. And it sort of gave that side of the building all of the energy, and the rest of it was, was, was, and so we sort of decentralized that and tried to try to spread that function so that it didn’t feel as if there was, you know, one really active part of the building and then one side of the building that felt just a bit quieter and a bit more less relevant.
Ben Freda 25:32
So you walk now. I assume you get in off the elevators, which are sort of in the middle. So you walk in and you see what it’s like.
Francis Court 25:42
So it’s, it’s, it’s what we would describe, or we spoke to Spencer about, as this stage for for communal storytelling. So it was, it was the, it was the opportunity to feature some of the work that the organization, the current work that they were doing. It was the opportunity to create seating areas where people would actually want to stay and actually do a quick meeting. It was the opportunity to to put out all of their publications. It was the opportunity to tell the history of Spencer, you know, and why the work that they do matters and how it’s relevant. And so it became much more of a central hub, and all of that was designed to be simply interchangeable. So the story is obviously changing. It’s not a museum to Spencer. So it has to be dynamic, and it has to be changing and evolving, not that you get in the creative agency every time something changed, but how does somebody, a team member, put up a notice and say, We’re doing this initiative, or how do we, how do we make it so that it’s a lot more accessible, it feels like a shared kind of stories, storytelling space,
Ben Freda 26:56
right? Yeah, that’s really cool. That’s really cool. How do you feel? And obviously, the big question here, when you’re doing an office redesign, obviously, is relevant, is, are people going to the office or not? Is kind of part of it as well? And yeah, and what do you what are your thoughts on that? Are you thinking that it makes sense to have permanent offices for people? Are people kind of coming in hybrid and and using the office space, meeting area more, or hot desks, or what are your thoughts on all that? That’s
Francis Court 27:27
a really good point, because you know, if you if, if I know this has changed, and there’s a dynamic, but let’s say, you know, staff coming into the office to two and a half days a week. Yeah, that’s 36% of the building, 36% of the seven-day week being used in an active way. So we would, I think this goes back to to the way that you know, I was trained as a designer. How do you, how do you, how do you make sure that the building is as efficient as it possibly can be? 36% return on usage is really low, and so part of what we tried to do was think about sweating the asset. How do we make it? How do we get it to work for longer, for harder? And one of the key things with Spencer is their convening. They are about building community, and they organize a lot of meetings. They organize a lot of one-on-one meetings. They will organize a lot of dinners and a lot of private events, and they will have a lot of beds for 300 people. So we introduce the idea that they should do that all within their home. Why would you go and rent a venue in a hotel? Why would you go to a restaurant? Why wouldn’t you do all of that within your facility? And so, if we thought about the way that the space was divided and used, we could accommodate all of those things within the building. So not only are there efficiencies in terms of the use of the building, but also in terms of introducing and bringing people into the heart of Spence Australia, showing them what the organization was about and allowing them to engage with it more directly. That made a lot more a lot of sense. And so that’s part of the solution that we came up was, was this, what we ridiculous name called Flexibision, but this idea that there was this flexible space that would allow you to to do, to do all of those things that, yeah, that’s
Ben Freda 29:21
amazing. Because imagine having a dinner for, I don’t know, partner, you know, donors or partners or something. You could do it at a fancy restaurant, or even a nonfancy restaurant, but going to an Italian place down the street is not going to tell anyone who goes there what Spencer’s all about, going doing it in their office, if it’s a pleasant place, is going to help underline everything that you guys are going to be talking about already, right?
Francis Court 29:44
And without compromising, from a sort of practical point of view, if the staff working, or if there’s, you know, or that it feels like you’re having dinner in the middle of an office, that’s kind of weird as well. So yeah, it was, it was, it was about getting that, that balance right, and then just to deal. Of the other questions that you asked, I mean, we started, we processed it by defining what it was that Spencer was looking to achieve with the office, but also what staff, if we were going to ask staff to leave the comfort of their homes and all of you know, what was it that we were offering that was different that made what that made the environment dispense office better or something different if it wasn’t better, I don’t think anything could be better than what was. What was it that we could facilitate that would make coming to the office an important part of the of working week, and that that has to go beyond just seeing other people but so we started thinking about the creation of thinking about it more as a as a sort of a members club, you know, a private member’s club. How do you create spaces that people can use in the same way you might use a members club if you, if you travel a lot, so and so, that was an important part of it, in terms of this idea of trying to build a home from home, was the other other point. So we deliberately steered away from anything corporate in terms of colors, fixtures, furniture, and sound within the space, so it shouldn’t feel loud and echo. It needed to feel a lot more a lot more intimate. So we worked on all of those things to try and make it somewhere that people wanted to go, go to, rather than somewhere where they had to go because they had to see other colleagues. Yeah,
Ben Freda 31:31
I like that a lot. It makes it feel more like home, like having carpets or plants, for instance, or whatever.
Francis Court 31:38
Yeah, well, that’s you’re right. I mean, that was so the central part of the building that we spoke about again; I’m not sure our client particularly likes the names, although they seem to have stuck. But info as, this idea that was sort of said to the building, was information hub. There was also an oasis. And so that has these green walls, these green walls and benches where you can which is felt a bit more, bit more natural and kind of domestic in scale. Yeah, totally.
it was. It was, I think it’s a striking, it’s a striking first arrival at Spencer. I think one of the best comments, I took it as a bit of a I didn’t take it very well. I heard one of the one of staff said something along the lines of, it’s just like the website. And that’s probably a compliment, but it sounds to me. And I was thinking, Well, yeah, I kind of get it, but
Ben Freda 32:43
that’s really funny. Yeah, no, I did notice when I looked at pictures greenery as well, like we said, that is important. And even though I have a plant in the background, which actually, if you watch the videos of the last couple of episodes, it used to be much bigger, and it’s it’s really suffered. And so we’re going the wrong direction in this house, at least when it comes to plants, but, but it is very Yeah, that can really make a difference to me. Anyone who
Francis Court 33:13
knows me. I’m an architectural purist because of my education. So before, before COVID, if anyone had asked me, I would have said, no plants inside, no plants in interiors. They are really inside. You should look at them out through the don’t belong indoors. But that all changed. So there’s some positive somewhere from the pandemic. I’ve changed my perspective entirely on plants. Oh,
Ben Freda 33:39
is that right? Is that right? But why do you think that happened? What did the pandemic change? About you wanting to see plants inside? I don’t
Francis Court 33:46
know. It’s a good point. It’s interesting. I mean, we our studio. I wouldn’t allow plants in the studio, but if you saw it now, it’s pretty much like a jungle. So I don’t have a, I don’t have a good, good answer, but I’m gonna have to think about that. Watch, I think, I don’t
Ben Freda 34:06
want to put words in my mouth, but I feel like, for me, personally, it’s getting older. You know what I mean? Like, you see in New York City, you see this all the time. You see, like, if you, if you walk through New York City, you’ll see, every once in a while, a window just full of plants. Someone’s got houseplants there, and you know, the person living there is about 80 years old. That is what New York City old people do, apparently, is they just hang out at home and water their plants, and then it just becomes a jungle. And it’s happening to me too, man, it’s happening to me too. I don’t know. So, yeah, I think we’re just getting older anyway.
Francis Court 34:39
That makes sense to me. I could buy this. So let
Ben Freda 34:43
me ask you this. We are already out of time, but I do want to ask you one question because I’m very familiar with the process of building a website in terms of, hey, we’re going to do strategy, we’re going to do wireframes, we’re going to do mock-ups, and then when we have a bunch of mock-ups and we understand what we’re doing, we have there. Architecture, then we’re going to build something. We’re going to test it. That’s pretty well done. No, and I’m sure you guys have your own process for doing that. We have a process for doing that. Every agency that does websites has a process for doing that. What is the process for designing an office space? Do you have wireframes up? Are you an architect? So you probably have. How do you do this?
Francis Court 35:16
Well, look, I think there’s the process of surprisingly similar I use, I use the analogy very often with with clients, when they’re talking about a website and explaining why you would have to do a site map, and then why you would do wireframes. I use the analogy of architecture very often, but I probably extended a bit to the point of just that you can have a new home or a new room built, but it’s not until you live in it that you really understand what works and what doesn’t work. And so yeah, we probably take the same attitude to websites and always think about the end point of a website not being the day that it’s launched but perhaps a little bit beyond that. Obviously, that’s it’s it’s a luxury in terms of clients being able to afford that, but it is a better way to think about it. But I think your point, your question, was to do with the similarities. I see them as very similar. You go through the same process of, at least in my mind, a concept that talks about the tonality of what it is that you’re going to do, whether it’s a website or building. You would go through some initial concept sketches, which probably somewhere between the development of the look and feel and an initial approach to the wireframe, sorry, to The sitemap. And I always talk about, you know, the this being engineering and architectural drawings, which is what you’d need in start building anything is, and I think visualization. We would, we would always try to again, it’s a luxury that not every client has access to. But we would, we would prototype out every part of the of the design in the same way you would with with a building. So we were trying to visualize and minimize the unexpected elements that happen when somebody looks at walks into a room and says, Oh, I wasn’t what they’ve seen for the first time. I wasn’t expecting it to be so tall, or, yeah, visit a website and say, Oh, I wasn’t expecting it to feel like that or look like that, to do that as well, but I think the process is very similar. And I think the point with both of them is, I’m really out of practice as an architect, and I know nothing about code in America, and I don’t understand, you know, the contract, contractual mechanisms, although I’m interested in how all that works, and I’d say the same with websites. You know, we always work with experts like yourselves to actually build the website, to make it happen, to actually understand what it takes, you know, under the skin, to make everything work and function, and the way that it needs to, whether it’s a website or building. So I think it is about partnership. I think that’s, again, probably part of the way that we like to work. It’s we worked with, with Spencer, with a with a partner, they had an architectural firm, they had a contractor. And I think we have the easy, but I always say it’s the easy, but we just pushing around, you know, the pretty pictures and the bits of furniture and and somebody else has to go, and, you know, same with building websites, somebody else has to go and actually work out how to make that damn thing happen somehow. So I think it’s a really good question, because the similarity between the two, at least in my mind, and I, you know, I maybe we doing something wrong, I’m not sure, with websites, but, but that’s the way I think about
Ben Freda 38:43
Yeah, no, I think you’re right too. We, come to think of it, you mentioned this, but you’re right. We, I often will describe the process of the, at least the planning and design process, as similar to, hey, we’re going to build a house. We don’t want to just build it, right first, you know, we’re sort of, we’re figuring out what we’re building first. We’re taking the risk of it down by trying these little pieces before we actually effectuate the entire thing. So yeah, I guess I do use the same even the word wireframe is often referred to as a blueprint, which is construction doc, yeah, yeah. Okay, that makes sense. But
Francis Court 39:17
the other thing with it is getting and I would say that, I would say this to any client, just the key, key parts of this that you you need experts for, you know, you who earn their who earn their money and earn their keep and earn the value in what they do. And that is, for me, is particularly when you’re building, you know, building a website is having or, you know, the client wouldn’t dream of doing the install of the of an office themselves. And I think it’s the same with the website. You should, you should. It’s, it’s worth getting folks in who know how to do this efficiently at the right times. It’s, there’s no, I don’t think there’s any way around that in my in my mind,
Ben Freda 39:58
yeah. Unfortunately. Yeah, it’s still a not a DIY thing, yeah, no building an office or building a website. Okay, listen, this has been so good and so much fun to talk to you. My really, my last question is just, if people want to find out more about you, about WONDERSPHERE, about what you do, where can they go? Where can they reach out to you? Probably
Francis Court 40:20
the best place is the website. So our website is pretty up to date: Wondersphere.com, that’s probably the best way to get a hold of us.
Ben Freda 40:31
Okay, by the way, great name. You probably get this all the time. WONDERSPHERE, awesome! My real last question is, how did you come up with the name?
Francis Court 40:40
I don’t know whether to answer this honestly or not. We spend all our time coming up with names and brands for clients. And of all the names and brands that we’ve ever come up with, one is just the one I like. Least I really like the name. I get so many people who say they like the name, and it makes me really uncomfortable, because I just never liked it. But it’s one of those things you live with. Wow.
Ben Freda 41:08
That is fascinating. I kind of love that answer that that is fascinating. What is it? What is it you don’t like about it, or you don’t know, you just have a weird feeling about it.
Francis Court 41:18
Just feels so clunky. I like things to be, to be more direct and and clearer and clearer to articulate. But the story with it was when I, when I, when I started, I I was on the spot, and I had to think of something literally at the moment, like in five minutes. Yeah, we’ve got to get this done, because we need to do this. This has to be registered. And there was just, it was just, it’s gonna be this every single year. Literally, actually, I probably stopped in the last five years. I always go, is it too late to change it?
Ben Freda 41:53
Oh, my God, dude, if you change it, I’m taking it because that is great. I mean, my our name is terrible. Our name is BFC digital because my name, it used to be called Ben Frederick consulting BFC because that’s my name, which is the worst name for a company ever. My name, I don’t even do most of the work anymore, you know? I mean, it doesn’t have much to do with me. I mean it a little bit, but, yeah, it has much more to do with the other people here and all that kind of stuff. So I just, I hate that. It’s my initials. It’s the worst. So,
Francis Court 42:22
well, you see, this is, again, this is, this is an interesting conversation, because we have this a lot with clients. It is about the name. And it isn’t about the name, it’s, it’s obviously about what you stand for and the values and right? And I think that all becomes, that’s all secondary. I really do think that, you know, we
Ben Freda 42:41
It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t if
Francis Court 42:44
clients come to us and they say they want to, you know, spend a lot of time doing names, I tend to switch off a bit because I think they’re spending time and money in the in the wrong places, that actually where you where you should be focused, is somewhere slightly different, totally.
Ben Freda 42:59
I mean, people know you as WONDERSPHERE, though, you know, and that that works. It’s a name. It’s the moniker. It means something. Just leave it.
Francis Court 43:08
Same advice back, right, back, you know, BSC, I, you know, I It stands for something very different. If you haven’t told me, of course, it’s your initials. I know that, but it stands for, it stands for the conversation that we had today. And that’s very different to, you know, three, three letter acronyms. So
Ben Freda 43:28
thank you. I’m so i That’s funny. Yeah, it’s just that I do the same thing. I think I should change this. We should change this. And then I forget, don’t worry about it. Listen, I really appreciate you coming on. It’s been so much fun. And yeah, wondersphere.com or if you’re in the UK, wondersphere.co.uk although I imagine it will direct you to the right place no matter where you go. And thanks, thanks again. I really appreciate
Francis Court 43:51
Ben, thank you. It’s absolutely a pleasure. I enjoyed every bit of the conversation and the pre-conversation before we started recording, so I’m really, really delighted to have had the conversation. Excellent. Thanks again.
Outro 44:06
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