Inspiration: 17 Awesome Office Wall Maps

Recently a lot of my time has been spent wading through and tagging all of the photos on Office Snapshots for the Photo Collections. So far I’ve tagged various Room Types as well as Environmental Graphic Design elements.

Though many people might think such work sounds terribly tedious and boring (you’re mostly right), it has given me a good opportunity to identify trends or common features that I might have otherwise not seen or passed by. One such common feature I noticed when tagging Wall Graphics and Glass Graphics were an abundance of maps.

Map graphics in offices have a wide variety of uses beyond the obvious one of needing to put a graphic on a wall to fill up space.

Some of the uses I’ve noticed are:

    • Connecting the office to its location – often street maps or public transit maps.
    • Identifying offices around the world, adding perspective to the company’s global context.
    • Just looking awesome and simply providing some nice style.

As someone that finds maps inherently interesting, I really a like the idea of placing them in offices, especially if they are meant to convey some sort of information.

In the photo of NBBJ’s elevator lobby, their map graphics show the local geographies of the company’s other offices around the world. These not only look great, but they tell something about who the company is and how it is connected to others throughout the world.

The blue United States map is from Skype’s Palo Alto offices and displays the company’s service usage throughout the country. The brighter the spots of white, the more Skype usage in that area.

What do you think of the idea of maps in offices? Have you seen any interesting examples?