About the “First Day” Office
Alibaba Group's headquarter, known as the "First Day" Office, is located in Azadi Innovation Factory. The name of this office originates from the beliefs of the founders of Alibaba. They believe that despite considering the long and successful path that Alibaba Group has gone over the years, all Alibaba team members are still on the first day of their work, and there are many mountains to conquer.
What was the problem?
The First Day building branding project was designed to provide solutions to several basic problems. Alibaba Group needed a visual identity system for it’s headquarter that could:
1. Create a unified and consistent visual experience for internal and external stakeholders of the group.
2. Be in line with the vision of the organization centered on “Iran”
3. To depict the organizational culture of Alibaba Group in the form of environmental graphics.
4. Give energy to the space with the appropriate use of "color" in a building that is completely designed in black and white.
5. Introduce this building as an office for the activity of a set of brands and not just the "Alibaba" brand.
6. Help people find indoor spaces by designing an integrated environmental guidance system
In order to show that a series of brands are active in this building and these brands are not overshadowed by the name of Alibaba, we first built the main idea of the sign based on this concept and by holding communication programs to explain the sign at the organization, we tried to convey this message. We also dedicated the main lobby wall of the office to this topic and showed the importance of the topic with the design of this wall.
To create consistency in visual identity of the First Day office, we defined four main rules. These rules were square form, color palette, combination of yellow and black color and Anjoman type family. We followed these rules throughout the project.
In order to be able to highlight "Iran" as the main keyword of Alibaba Group's vision, we named the different parts of the office with the names of the provinces and the meeting rooms with the names of the cities of Iran. Also, by producing relevant content about these provinces and cities and displaying them in different parts of the office, we turned the First Day office into a small Iran.
To show the organizational culture in the two dimensions of "First-Day culture" and "leadership literature", we created posters and symbols distributed in different parts of the office. In this case, we saw that the employees of the were engaged with these concepts and their feedback was great.
To create visual energy in the black and white space of the office, we considered a suitable color strategy. The maximum use of yellow and black, which has a lot of energy, as well as the definition of a "First Day" palette of energetic colors and the expansion of this palette in all the touchpoints of the office, helped us to find a solution for this problem.
Credits
Art Directior: Ida Moraghebati
Logo and Visual Identity Designer: Ramin Pahlavan Hoseini
Graphic Designer: Sharareh Azizvand
Content Manager: Yousef Farahani
Copywriter: Babak Khodadoust
Executive: Hoseini Hoseinian
Photography: Majid Shahrabi
Graphic Designer: Sharareh Azizvand
Content Manager: Yousef Farahani
Copywriter: Babak Khodadoust
Executive: Hoseini Hoseinian
Photography: Majid Shahrabi
