Every office needs a blackboard
The best thing I ever did in the enotions’ office was paint one of the walls with blackboard paint. People scoffed. Some people thought that I was returning to my troubled youth with drawn windows and walls painted black. But I wasn’t.
The blackboard gives space and freedom to scribble, scrawl and record details, significant and minute, at a moment’s notice, for the lifetime of a meeting, or till the shade is drawn on the blackboard for the last time.
Chalk is such a great material to work with. Even with my keyboard heavy hands I can write vaguely clearly with it and mistakes take a moment to erase. Chalk comes in many colours. It gives you a sense of scholarly fulfillment, taking you back to the days of chalk boards, canes and board rubbers (damn, giving my age away now!). Dampen a cloth and with a wipe the blackboard returns to pristine glory.
But the greatest joy is it extracts you from your monitor and gets you UP and focusing on a big impending object in the office instead of a small shimmering bright screen. Blackboards don’t try to hide from you. They sit there, like big black monoliths etched with white and pink and yellow and blue markings, and just ask you to look into them and give your eyes a rest.
People have suggested I should invest in a white board. But white boards say to me sterile lecture halls, health and safety briefings, regimented thinking, corporate compliance. Blackboards shout radical thinking, extrovert, limitless thinking, can do attitude.
Everyone who visits enotions doesn’t look at our work or framed awards or rows of files or nice wooden floorboards. They look at our blackboard and say, “Oh, I like that.”
Tags: black boards, black boards in offices, blackboards, using a black board
