Inside The Attempt Guys’ Vibrant Workplace and Studio

The Try Guys got famous making YouTube videos in which founders Ned Fulmer, Eugene Lee Yang, Keith Habersberger, and Zach Kornfeld expand their horizons by doing things like testing out a labor pain simulator, baking pie without a recipe, eating everything on the Taco Bell menu, and more. After getting their start at BuzzFeed, they formed their own production company in 2018, and now—nearly four years later—the quartet has had to try their hands at design to create an office space that can accommodate the fast-growing startup’s now 15-person staff and its needs. 

For the content creators whose logo is a blue, pink, purple, and green tryceratops (get it?), a typical corporate office just wouldn’t do. Instead they found a 5,000-square-foot space in Burbank, California, that they could customize from top to bottom, creating a conference room, offices for the founders and staff, a wood-paneled podcast studio, a camera-ready kitchen with green cabinetry, and a crown jewel of a video studio, all while saving the building from its previous fate. 

“We were very fortunate that we got to design this space from the ground up,” Fulmer says in a new video for AD. “It was supposed to be one of those bank/coffee shops,” Habersberger elaborates. “You’ve seen them. They’re confusing.”

Loud and whimsical, the design of the Try Guys HQ makes perfect sense. In a place where the cameras are often rolling, there’s impeccable lighting and plenty of fun accent walls that can also serve as backdrops for videos. “It’s like the Wonka factory, but instead of you being able to eat everything, you can film everything,” Kornfeld says. Even the electrical panels boast colorful designs thanks to a muralist known as Murt. 

As colorful as the space is, it was also important to the guys that the office look grown-up and professional. Midcentury-modern touches like an Andrew Neyer Astro Mobile Light in the conference room (Lee Yang’s favorite piece in the office) and a classic Eames chair in the guys’ workspace do the trick. Fulmer’s wife Ariel is an interior designer, and helped the guys to realize their vision for the workspace. “I knew that the space had to be polished, colorful. But I also wanted it to be a little bit masculine,” she says. (The couple opened their home to AD in a 2019 video.)

By far the most eye-popping area is the video studio, which was the brainchild of production designer Susannah Honey. “There were some distinct masculine touches, in a traditional way [throughout] most of the office, and the studio ended up being what I would say is a more conservatively feminine space,” Lee Yang says. “More of a ’60s, ’70s slant in terms of design features, and I think it turned out really well. I think a lot of people feel comfortable in this space.” The three distinct walls are all awash in lavender, and surround a white bouclé couch flanked by two velvet armchairs in a rich burnt orange. The space is both wiggly and geometric, playful and professional. Most of all it is representative of the guys’ growth, Fulmer says. “This feels like a real maturing moment for us.”