'I felt guilty stopping to go and watch TV, so I would work late all the time'

I DID WHAT all my lecturers told me not to do. They told me not to set up your own agency right after college and not to make mistakes with your own time and money.

I was always obsessed with art and wanted to do something creative – that’s my passion and my talent. I did a degree in interior architecture and furniture design, getting a first-class honours degree. I worked my arse off.

When I graduated it was the height of the recession in 2009. I had always been quite ambitious about where I wanted to work, but the majority of the interior design companies in Ireland were closed or reduced in size, so there weren’t many job opportunities at all.

I got offered a masters in London, in Kingston University doing product and spacial design. From the start, they forced you to be outside your comfort zone – that was their main teaching.

They mixed different disciplines of design, looking at creativity as a broad spectrum. They took fashion designers, architects, engineers, graphic designers, and we all had to work together, which was quite challenging.

But I did well – I ended up coming top of my class and exhibiting at Tent London as part of London’s design week. So I had these great qualifications, but it was still the recession and you still you needed a few years’ experience to get into any of the top firms.

I came back with my classmate, Susanna Kingston, and started to do a few small jobs – the intention was just to do that for three months so that we could have a couple of projects under our belts to then go back to London companies with.

We had no business background whatsoever – neither of us had even done basic business studies – we were just two full-on creatives who were passionate about design.

But it escalated into one very large project, and then we started to build up some word-of-mouth recommendations and referrals. Three months quickly turned into three years.

Roisin Lafferty

An accident

Setting up my own interior architecture and design agency was something I always wanted to do, but I didn’t think it would happen accidentally.

After three years, which were very stressful, with a fast pace of learning and a lot of mistakes, Susanna chose to then take her portfolio and go to London. But I chose to stay; I just couldn’t bear the though of leaving after putting in that much work.

In the four years since then, I’ve developed a team and there’s 10 of us at the moment. We’ve established ourselves within the world of design, winning a lot of awards and developing into the commercial market.

We did three of Iconic Offices’ largest fitouts – they really pride themselves on having a uniqueness with each project. We designed Urbana’s clinic and we’re retained for Therapie and Optilase – so we’re doing a large, three-storey building for them in Belfast at the moment.

The one thing I’ve been very uncompromising the whole time, even when I’ve been laughed at, was to not let the design integrity go, because that is the whole point of this for me. If you lose that, you lose the point of everything.

Work-life balance

In this industry, it can get quite obsessive. Being a creative filters down through everything I do: where I choose to eat, where I go on holidays, everything about how I dress. There is, to me, no real work-life balance – that doesn’t exist.

For the last three years, up until only a few months ago, I was working from my home in Ranelagh – and, as the team grew, we could have up to eight people working there as well. Obviously we’ve grown at quite a quick pace and it did, of course, facilitate that.

There was plenty of space, we had designed it that way, so on paper it was a really great environment to work in, but there was zero separation between my work life and my personal life.

What I found was that I almost felt guilty for stopping working to go and watch TV, so I would just work late all the time. There’s no parameters and there’s no discipline instilled because you’re just constantly in your office; even if you’re sick, you’re in your office.

We have just moved to a new office, which is really exciting thing – it’s under wraps at the moment, but we’re launching in November on Baggott St. That’s the next step, and it’s a really good next step.

Psychologically, I think, it’s a lot more positive to leave for work, and then come back and to have your home as a sanctuary. That’s what we say to clients all the time, so it’s funny when you realise you’re not living by what you say.

Iconic Offices' Brickhouse

Managing creativity

There’s that old idea of ‘if you spend longer and you work harder, it will be better’, but often that’s not the case with creativity. Sometimes stepping away and going for a walk, taking a minute, will make you function better.

There’s definitely a healthier approach since we moved to our new office – people can come in, be more focused during their time here and then they go.

I encourage, where possible, that people restrict themselves to set timeframes. If you’re focusing on a project, especially with technology – we use Pinterest and Instagram for inspiration a lot – you can be lying in bed, and all of a sudden three hours have passed and what have you actually achieved, except being exhausted the next day?

Our design work can be a very pressurised environment – the important thing is to keep the team together and reflect over past jobs so that you can learn from them and then don’t make the same mistakes again.

Exercise is a big stress-reliever for me during high-pressure times. I can get completely organised and have everything running perfectly, and then a couple of bad things happen and I drop it all at once.

Going to pilates at half six, it forces you to leave work, to go and switch off your brain. Physically it’s really beneficial, but also mentally I just find it completely calms you and gives you fresh perspective.

Challenges

I think going from just a designer to being a business owner with a team has been my biggest challenge so far. A huge amount of that, I’ve realised, is to do with confidence – when you haven’t been trained in something, you doubt yourself more.

Business to me was this separate thing that you had to learn, but what I discovered is that it’s just about thinking logically and stepping away from a reactive situation and putting a framework around things.

I have had quite a bit of support; I had the opportunity to do Going for Growth and my mentor was Louise Phelan from PayPal. The programme was really tough, but it taught me a lot of the business foundation skills and ways to deal with problems and people.

Because I hadn’t really worked for other people, apart from part-time or as a student, I don’t always know how things should be. Having a fresh perspective can be good, but then you don’t have the reassurance of knowing exactly how most people experience work and the structures that go with it.

Since then, we recruited a really good accounts team and an in-house office manager, and an external business consultant. It’s definitely been a learning curve, but we’re getting there – we have a lot more systems in place now than even a year ago.

I’ve had a bad experiences; I have learned to protect myself and to seek professional advice and have things structured as much as possible. But I would never know half as much as I do if I hadn’t dived in the deep end.

Roisin Lafferty is creative director and founder of Kingston Lafferty Design. This article was written in conversation with Peter Bodkin as part of a series for the IDI’s Mind Over Matter mental health campaign, which features Fora as media partner.

To raise money for the initiative, businesses can book one-hour consultations with some of Ireland’s brightest design minds for €60, all of which goes to Aware. Mind Over Matter is taking place nationwide on 2 November.