The Studio McGee Office Deep Dive: Design Library

We’re excited to share more with you today about one of the most unique and exciting parts of our new office space — the design library!  

“Design teams come with all kinds of samples, so we wanted to create a place to help organize everything.”

- Shea McGee

When we first moved into the office space, the design library was one open room. We knew we wanted it to feel unique from the rest of the office, so Tyler created walls on both sides with built-ins and bins to section off the space. A big dream for this room was to have it reflect a library, and the look of the shelves help do just so!  

We knew this space needed to serve two purposes: to be both functional and collaborative. We wanted it to not only house all of our design samples, but to be a place where the team could work on client presentations and trays together. The design islands allow the team to sprawl out and collaborate on finish selections, and they also serve as open meeting spaces to gather around for both team and individual meetings. We organized the island drawers based on the samples they contain for easy navigation by the team — because there’s endless samples for every type of material and texture, we created a system within the drawers to help organize the chaos.  

A fun touch that we added to the shelves was the ladder — we love the old school look of it and how it adds character and charm to the room.  

Another important detail of this space is the placement of the design team conference room. It intentionally sits right next to the design library so that the team can easily move back and forth to the storage area during design presentations when different samples are needed.   

Because so much of what the design team does on a daily basis stems from inspiration, we wanted to create an area to display design and coffee table books for the team to mull over when needed. The designers really try to find inspiration in places other than social media, and this is the perfect spot for doing so. Below the shelves we added a long, singular desk that acts as an extra workspace for added variety.