Marstudio, Inc. recently moved into a strategic new location at Rockville Metro Plaza in the heart of Montgomery County, Maryland. Because so much creative design went into the construction, environmental design, and interior elements of our workspace, Marstudio’s Corporate Film & Photography Department produced this video to give you a behind-the-scenes look at the journey that led us to where we are today, from the ground up.
Read on to find out what Marstudio’s Chief Executive Officer and Creative Director had to say about creating our workspace.
Shevy
What prompted our search for a new site, a new location from our studio was that we were really looking for a showcase site to exhibit our capabilities. It’s typical for a lot of businesses in our industry to want to go into office spaces, cubicle spaces. As a marketing and creative agency I felt that we could do it differently.
My name is Shevy Shafie, I’m the Chief Executive Officer and Partner of Marstudio. It was really important for us to have a unique vision for our workspace, because our industry is saturated and you have to set yourself apart. As a creative agency we want to be able to practice what we preach. Instead of just telling you what you could do to benefit your organization, we are actually showing you the way and leading by example.
We decided to build from scratch because that’s the way we handle every project. We’re a custom solution creative agency and working from a blank palette allows you to truly create a specific identity or creative vision that is yours, and unique to you, and sets you apart from your competition.
Sam
We were looking for another space, but we really wanted to stay within the Town Square in Rockville. Shevy came to me and one night said “Let’s take a ride.” He looked at the space right in front of us and Shevy asked me, “What do you think about this one?”
I told him, “Are you crazy? I don’t even know if we can afford that.”
He said, “What if we could? What if we could afford it, would you want to go in there?”
My answer was, “Why not? Why not dream big?” We did dream big, and now we’re here. My name’s Sam Rooeintan, and I’m the Creative Director and Founder at Marstudio. The idea was how we go about it, who to contact. All of that was taken care of by Shevy, he planned everything down to a T for us to be able to have the space that we have today.
Shevy
My involvement with the studio build was really on the strategic vision side of things. Just as in any other project that you might handle you have a lot of different people that have to come together collectively to make that vision come to fruition. One of my first partners in this endeavor was Sam, my Creative Director who took the vision I had in my mind and unfolded that narrative in a visual way through some draft blueprints. Its really important to have partners that see that vision and want to make that vision come to fruition.
Sam
My role pretty much was to act as someone that would keep the business functioning while we were transitioning into our new space. However, I had a very close eye of what was going on in terms of the layout and design and was playing a supporting role in terms of giving my expertise considering that I do have architecture background. That would help a lot when we were trying to decide how to divvy up the space and how to create functionality for our staff.
The key factor for a space to work for us was that we knew that we wanted to have this space with a storefront and not to be tucked away in an office space somewhere. We were also clear about having an open space to foster teamwork and creativity.
Shevy
The staff influenced the design greatly. In designing a space it can’t just look good, it needs to be functional.
Sam
Obviously we accounted for all of our directors in order for them to have very specific spaces in the overall space, and how we divided the functional spaces from recreational spaces was very important to us. We ultimately knew that we wanted an open space so that everybody could communicate.
Shevy
Marketing in its purest form is communication at the end of the day. Having an environment that facilitates that communication allows for transparent communication. Facebook wasn’t the first company to create this open platform, this open model where information is seamless as it goes from one department head to another.
Sam
I think the staff really likes the office space because we spend so much time at work during the day. Every time we get in the morning to go to work we want to go to a place that we like to be in. I think our space achieves that, it’s a place that people can come in and feel comfortable all day and enjoy being in the space.
Shevy
Our space is not just overhead, it’s actually part of our marketing and advertising budget so there are risks. Any risk that you would take in creating something new or having a vision that’s different from everyone else’s, that’s the entrepreneurial spirit and that’s what sets you apart. That’s that kind of spirit that you need to create something that’s unique.
Sam
Whenever you’re embarking on something that is outside of the norm there’s always a certain level of risk involved in it. However, when you’re embarking on doing something that other people haven’t done before, or other people shy away of doing just because the conventional wisdom says no, you have to ask yourself two questions: “Why? Why would it not work?” and two, “Could I actually make it work?”
Shevy
With any project there are obvious complications, or barriers, or pitfalls and really whether you’re successful or not in any project is how you choose to handle or overcome those obstacles. The joy of this project was seeing the process come to life, seeing that thought process, that vision come to life.
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