Fusion by Design Limited.

What inspired the founding of your company?

I started my journey into the world of Hospitality Design whilst in my second year at Jacob Kramer Art College in Leeds. I was lucky enough to be invited on a 2-week placement at Joshua Tetley Brewery in Leeds. I immediately fell in love with this area of creative design, the team at Tetleys were great fun, they knew how to achieve a great work life balance, I think 50% of the time was spent socialising in the brewery tap, all in the name of research of course!

I was lucky enough to be offered a job at the end of my 2-week placement but I had decided to complete my higher education. The job was held open for me and there started my real journey into the world of Hospitality Design. The design department at Joshua Tetleys had closed down and there sprung the first of many design companies, created by those individuals I had worked for on my placement.

Phoenix Architecture and Interiors was a company set up by the chief architect, David Craiggs, and Head of Design, David Binns from Tetleys. Without doubt these two gentlemen laid the foundations for my business. After 6 years with them I moved from Phoenix to a couple of other businesses, eventually taking a leap of faith a setting up my own business in December 1998. It was really through encouragement from others in the industry that I decided to set up my own business. One evening I was dropping off a student that was working for us and she made a comment that changed my life, "My Ambition is to own my own...", it was her saying "My Ambition" that caught my attention. A term I hadn’t used or thought about in months and that was it. I handed in my notice a month later and the rest as they say is history!

26 years on and 4000 +projects to our name and I still have the same enthusiasm for the hospitality industry as I had when I smelt the hops on my first day at The Brewery.

What is the core philosophy behind your work?

Hospitality design is still our passion, as much as it is fantastic to win awards for our design, this isn’t our driving force. I want my business to be known for our professionalism, enthusiasm and knowledge. We are lucky enough to have a very varied client base, I can only remember one occasion when I pitched my business, all our work has come through recommendations or by clients moving from company to company and taking us with them.

We are always grateful for the work we receive and we never take anything for granted. I am still working with some of the companies from our first year of business, it is nice to know that after 26 years in the industry people feel we are still relevant.

Is there a particular aspect of your company or projects you’d like to highlight?

My most important asset is my team who are fantastic, all creatives but with skills in different areas of design. It is important to have a team who think differently, this challenges us to look at options as to how a problem can be solved. We pride ourselves on our design and detailing skills, we are regularly complimented by contractors at the level of detail we go to in our tender packs. Having a fully detailed and scheduled set of drawings ensures accuracy on site and provides the confidence in a scheme coming in on budget. Waving pretty pictures around and a having a bill of quantities being full of PC Sums is no good for anybody.

For any emerging designers it is very important that they can draw, by drawing using pen and paper, your brain automatically thinks about how a detail / design will look in 3D, working on a computer throws everything out in 2D before converting by programme to 3D so drawing a little sketch of what you are going to CAD up can be really helpful, this also helps you understand how your design will be constructed, always helpful when detailing to ensure the finished product is just as you had envisaged.