You might have noticed that we talk a lot about big ideas at ZENTX. It’s even in our tagline: “Big ideas. Big solutions.” Why, you ask? For starters, because we love using our creative juices to come up with brand-new environments or outside-the-box displays. For seconds, because it reminds us to welcome those big ideas. Every business needs some big-picture perspective, after all.
Many of our clients recognize how important a big-picture mindset is. If you think about it, that’s one of the things timeline walls or donor walls can do for you — give you an overview of your company’s story or of all the people who believe in your organization.
A number of our clients have taken the “big-picture” part literally and asked us to create large-scale map walls for them. Now, at first glance, a map wall might not seem like it would help create a certain mentality. But what better decoration to remind people to plan big than a decoration with horizons as big as the whole world?
Just ask our clients at Nexteer Automotive or Mid Michigan College. They’d be able to tell you.
The Colorful Map Wall
Our clients at Nexteer may be headquartered in Saginaw, but their reach is literally worldwide. They make steering systems for most major car manufacturers (Ford, General Motors, BMW, and Toyota, to name just a few).
With that kind of clientele, it’s no wonder that Nexteer has offices or manufacturing facilities on five continents. Naturally, they wanted to show off this global scale to people visiting their world headquarters.
A map wall proved to be the perfect solution. We represented the continents as collections of dots, since circle shapes are part of Nexteer’s branding. Dots colored red mark the locations of Nexteer’s facilities. Cables running from top to bottom of the map, meanwhile, hold labels identifiying what each facility is and where exactly it’s located.
With the signature red and gray colors, it’s an on-brand solution that shows the company’s importance in the world of steering systems.
The Interactive Map Wall
Mid Michigan College also wanted to show its global reach, but in a slightly different way. The college decided it wanted a way to visualize the geographic diversity among its students and staff. For that, they didn’t just need a map wall. They needed an interactive map.
We created a magnetic map wall for them, complete with magnetic pegs for people to mark their hometowns. As our contacts at Mid Michigan College explained, the map was enormously popular — so many people wanted to mark their place that they actually ran out of pegs!
This map doesn’t just show Mid Michigan College’s reach. It’s a community-building tool that sparks conversations and lets people see where their friends and classmates come from. With at least three continents represented in Mid Michigan’s student body, it helps to have a large-scale visualization of those areas and how near (or far) from Michigan they are.
In their own ways, both Nexteer’s and Mid Michigan College’s map walls remind people to have a bigger perspective. Nexteer’s headquarters is part of a worldwide network of facilities. Mid Michigan College draws students from around the U.S. and even from abroad. With these reminders of how broad the horizons are, the map walls create a sense of possibility and potential. You might even say they encourage big dreams and big ideas. And that’s something we can get behind any old day.
