American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA)

Rockville, Maryland

DCS Design recently designed The American Occupational Therapy Association’s (AOTA) new national headquarters in North Bethesda, MD, as well as led their organizational rebranding effort. The design and branding teams worked in tandem to ensure branding and the space design are cohesive, representative, and fully integrated.

The central design goal for the new headquarters space is “inclusive and accessible design,” and embodies AOTA’s dedication to helping occupational therapists and occupational therapy assistants to facilitate participation in everyday living for their patients and clients. Working closely with occupational therapy practitioners, the design and branding teams ensured both the space design and branding elements meet the diverse needs of people with physical, sensory, and cognitive challenges, while also creating an open, flexible, mission-representative work environment. Features of the space design include a custom reception desk which is entirely ADA height with wheelchair accessibility, light values created and monitored for low-vision persons, and colorful artwork created by recipients of occupational therapy interventions displayed throughout the space.  Designed to be healing and therapeutic, the design team created an over-all neutral color palette and injected fun strategic pops of AOTA’s new brand colors. Natural elements such as a live moss wall, rustic reclaimed barn wood, and stacked stone were used throughout to bring the outdoors in. Branding elements include a new logo with overlapping letterforms to create a multi-color palette, symbolizing the rich diversity and unity between practice, practitioner and client.