24 Lever Street

It's probably something to do with the architectural roots of our founders.

After spending our first couple of years sharing a studio with Love Creative – when we set about the search for a new studio in 2008 we had some particular ambitions in mind.

Despite giving local property agents a 'character space', 'no carpet' and definitely 'no ceiling tiles' brief, we spent a disappointing amount of time viewing spaces with carpet, ceiling tiles and absolutely no character.

Then as a wildcard, an agent showed us 24 Lever St. Once home to dozens of creative companies - it had been lying empty since 2007 when a huge fire in an adjacent building meant all the residents had to move out, and many lost their possessions and even their whole businesses.

Despite surviving the fire thanks to an old sprinkler system, the scars from the fire ran deep, but as soon as we looked at the top floor of the grade II listed building - we could see the potential and we ‘had to do it’.

Two years, a few wrong turns, and several grey hairs later - we finally moved in in October 2010 – with a vision not just for our space, but thanks to a listening landlord, contributing to a vision for the building as a creative hub. The enormously progressive Hyper Island recently started their first UK creative school in the basement.

In our space, we’ve recycled doors to our meeting rooms (christened Pie, Chips and Peas), we’ve a custom built eating area (‘no lunch at your desk’ is our only rule), walls for brainstorming, and a classic yet homely feel thanks to antique furniture and childhood photos.

Oh, and it’s also a great party space - launched with an exclusive Heston Blumenthal Sweet Shop experience room.

To help celebrate and market the building, we also produced an identity for the building, a newspaper and a website.

Rather than a dry corporate brochure, we chose to celebrate the diverse characters that make our neighbourhood – the Northern Quarter – what it is. We shot 24 portraits of 24 local residents, from creative agency heads to curry house proprietors, and circulated this in all the appropriate local outlets where potential tenants may hang out (bars, mainly!).

Our website celebrated the long rich story which would continue to be told by the building over several centuries.

We owe huge thanks to Atul Bansal and Dan Newport of Re-Form Architects, who worked tirelessly with us on the building and our fit-out.

And also to Various Artists and Digital Blah Blah who worked with us on the identity, newspaper and website.

We love it here, come up and see us sometime!