Why Do You Do What You Do?
– By Ben Cober, director of business development and research
Simon Sinek, author of ‘Start with Why,’ said in his 2009 TED Talk that companies which understand, live, and breathe the ‘why’ of what they do, just as much – if not more – than the ‘what’ and ‘how,’ are oftentimes far more successful. Thanks to the vision and creativity of artist Bryan Haynes, we’ll soon be showing off the deep ‘why’ about what we do.
The lobby of our office recently completed another phase of its renovation – introducing new flooring, lighting, paint and more. Later this spring, the eight wall panels between the elevators will be blanketed with a new, beautiful, floor-to-ceiling mural that demonstrates the deep emotions and purpose behind much of our work. The artist behind it all presented to our entire staff yesterday explaining his inspiration, methodology, and what we can expect (and what will surprise us).
Bryan is a graduate of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA, and today lives and works near his boyhood home of Labadie, MO. His resume includes an incredibly long list of impressive clients, including the likes of Disney, Universal Studios, Warner Brothers, Sony Music, Nike, and many, many more. We were first introduced to Bryan during the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial renovation of the Gateway Arch’s lobby, in which he created a beautiful mural behind the new ticketing kiosks combining the pioneering history of the St. Louis riverfront with the engineering triumph of the Arch. Bryan puts a tremendous amount of historical and photographic research into each of his projects and apparently goes through countless sketches and mock-ups until it’s perfect. We knew we had to work with him for our own home.
More than a year ago, Bryan was sent a list and tons of photographs of our projects. From those, he identified “animal and plant shapes that were beautiful” and took key elements and features of many of our favorite projects. His concepts then transformed into two separate murals, one for each wall – ‘Aqua,’ with a strong focus on the emotions, inspiration, and elements of many of our aquatic projects; and ‘Terra,’ the same themes but in regards to our land-based projects.
He was generous enough to share with us a single painted panel from the ‘Aqua’ piece; one he said was his favorite so far. For this section, he explained how he was strongly influenced by the book ‘The Age of Insight,’ which explains the science behind pinpointing the biological source of inspiration in the human brain. He wished to evoke feelings of tranquility, dreams, happiness, love, and the joy of experience – aspects of many our designs.
Of his eight-section mural, Bryan explained that there’s no story, nothing read left to right or top to bottom. He wanted it to be a collage of beautiful elements of destinations, with something new that will capture the eye every time someone walks past it, even for the 100th time. Luckily, this mural will last us a long time.
Bryan explained that he begins by painting acrylic on canvas in his 7 ½ foot-high basement, which can present a challenge when painting particularly tall murals (in which case, he has to paint them on an angled easel and torture his back). The paintings are then photographed at an incredibly high resolution, allowing them to be blown up to massive scales, printed on vinyl wall covering, and adhered to a surface. While this makes the mural easy to replace if it gets scratched, Bryan joked about how he has to be careful not to get any fingerprints on his original painting; because when blown up, they can become the size of beach balls.
He also noted that his greatest challenge in our project is a beautiful, liquid swirl spanning a number of panels of ‘Aqua,’ which incorporates hundreds of tiny people in a variety of playful, fun activities. “There’s a tremendous amount of detail and everyone will look different, yet I need to maintain the same color pallet of water and feeling of a smooth swirl,” he said.
When the completed masterpiece goes up this summer, it will not be a portfolio of PGAV Destinations’ work – although it will include elements and shapes of many of our projects, including Niagara Falls, the Biltmore Estate, Gettysburg, Journey to Atlantis, the pyramids of Cairo, penguins, polar bears, turtles, dolphins, whales, tigers, grizzly bears, and more. The overall goal is to provide an incredible impression – a tremendous, heroic icon that deeply catalogs the big idea, and deep meaning, of why we do what we do. It’s not just for visitors to PGAV Destinations – but for us as well, as we get up and stay mobile all day every day, everyone passes through our lobby as we invent the next big thing – to remind us what brought us to PGAV Destinations, and why we love what we do.
