Create & Cultivate Mixes Feminine Ethos with Industrial Accents in New Downtown LA Headquarters

Jaclyn Johnson, CEO of Create & Cultivate, the career conference and digital media platform juggernaut, has returned to her Downtown L.A. roots, this time with a stylish and refined work space. Named the Clubhouse, she and interior designer Ginny Macdonald collaborated on defining different work spaces within the 5,000-square-foot industrial setting.

In addition to a desk-lined work area, seating nooks, the kitchen and a conference room, Macdonald dreamed up a lounge area complete with a velvet sofa, velvet chairs and a marble coffee table; it’s her favorite look in the whole space. “ Work and home life tend to really collide these days so having break-out spaces that don’t feel corporate and stuffy are really important,” Macdonald said.

To create the foundational look throughout the Clubhouse, Macdonald took her cue from C&C’s feminine ethos, using salmon-toned pinks and blush tones, painting walls with Dunn-Edwards pale pink Translucent Silk (DE5147).

To help place the C&C stamp on the space’s look, Johnson tapped her artist husband to work on two walls, for which he created custom designs.

“Jaclyn’s husband is a super-talented artist so he created two amazing wall murals. The first being the terrazzo-inspired wall in the lounge area where he used a mix of different shades of peach, pink and grey from Dunn-Edwards,” Macdonald noted. The second mural, which features the phrase “Collaboration over Competition” in Translucent Silk (DE5147) — along with Cultured Rose (DE5123), Palm Springs favorite Rustique (DE5149) and Rosy Cloud (DE5182) — sets the tone for the kitchen.

In the kitchen, Macdonald utilized existing black cabinets, and worked them into the design scheme. “Black is such a good base color that goes with everything, especially pink.” She added a gray quartz island in the center, with the gray and black neutral shades balancing the frothy, feminine pink of the kitchen.

Darker colors played a role in the Clubhouse, too, with black as a throughline connecting each space to the industrial vibe of the building and echoing in the black metal framing of the double-height glass windows. Black shows up again in picture frames, chairs in Johnson’s office, the conference room and the metal accent of the rust-colored velvet chairs in the Lounge.

And finishing out the Clubhouse is a space dubbed The Blue Cave. Johnson and Macdonald really like blue and opted for Dunn-Edwards bright navy shade Summer Night (DE5811) on the walls. Painting The Cave blue added drama and broke up the Clubhouse’s pink shades, while the dramatic color speaks to Macdonald’s “rustic countryside” design style, rooted in her U.K. upbringing.

Create and Cultivate Clubhouse Color Palette:

All images by Smith House Photo and courtesy of Create & Cultivate