How did you discover your passion for design and get started in the industry? At heart, I’ve always been a nature boy. As a kid, my bedroom was practically a zoo. I expressed my love for nature in drawing, art and illustration, which later evolved into a passion for design. As a teenager, I did some summer stints doing talks at The Sea Life Centre in Birmingham—it was quite a learning curve but showed me the power of verbal communication. It has served me well in presenting and explaining concepts ever since.

My nature-grounded background perhaps shaped a strong conviction that human creativity—whether we plan it or not—strives to achieve the kind of “right-ness” we innately feel in the wonders of nature. My career has grown out of my ability to combine rigor and structure with creative imagination, as well as a joy in celebrating all of this in the ways I describe it.

Halfway through a truly wonderful foundation course—originally intended as a “year out from respectable studies” at the encouragement of my arty mates—I had a genuine life epiphany thanks to a brilliant tutor. This led to my calling, as it seemed at the time, in 3-D and product design—the ideal field for both my scientific mindset and creative instincts. I remember thinking what a close shave this was; if only my previous school had been better enlightened about the range of possibilities for deep-thinking creative students.

After graduating with a 3-D design degree from Ravensbourne University in London, I met Jon Blakeney. He was the first person to interview me for a job at eccentric retail consultancy Visual Line. There was instant work chemistry—I immediately had this weird feeling that I would spend my entire career working with Jon. A few years later, in 1997, Jon, me and two other partners officially formed First Partnership, which would be rebranded in 2006 as I-AM Associates.

What do you do in your role as managing director and group partner at experiential design agency I-AM? My role is all about ensuring that our clients get what they need—and then some. We’re there to have a positive impact on their businesses through having a positive impact on their target consumers, which means developing creative strategies as frameworks for our product: people-inspired experiences. Design, I believe, is at its best when you perfectly blend logic and magic, so all of our strategies and concepts strive to achieve that. My role is to create alchemy between the two.

On a practical level, my particular role involves meeting—and hopefully inspiring—new potential clients, agreeing on what our partnership with them should be, facilitating the collaboration as lead partner-consultant, co-presenting work alongside our brilliant teams and building long-term client relationships. In the studio, it involves working on design concepts alongside my partners, directors and design teams, as well as making sure our achievements get the response and recognition they deserve. Also, as managing director, I am responsible for steering the ship and ensuring there’s enough wind in our sales (sic).

Our clients range from fast-food giants like KFC and restaurant chains like Pizza Express and coffee giant Starbucks to global banks, retailers, hospitality brands and independent startups. It’s diverse, but whatever the industry we work with, the goal remains the same: transforming the experience model for a digital-first world and crafting spaces that connect with people on an emotional level.

We spend a lot of time talking to clients about how to truly activate their spaces: Retail today isn’t so much about the practical, transaction-centric stuff like putting their products in the right way in spaces—though that’s still important. You have to create an experience people will choose to visit, rather than need to.

How does experiential design differ from other design disciplines, and what unique challenges does it pose to creatives? It’s a creative field that goes beyond aesthetics; it’s about creating a full sensory and emotional connection between a brand and its audience. Memorable experiences create customer loyalty and reinforce brands’ identities. To succeed, they need to go deeper, surprising and delighting people in substance as well as style. Experience creation demands a delicate balance between function, psychology, interaction and storytelling—all of which have to feel on brand.

The challenge is crafting spaces that aren’t just beautiful but also immersive and meaningful. Most physical retail isn’t about “stores” to sell products any more. At its best and most relevant now, it’s about something far more exciting. Apple and Nike have been leading this change for many years, using flagship spaces more as energizing brand cathedrals and clubhouses than stores. This principle is now cascading down through every physical retail format. Today, the integration of digital and physical strategies is at the core of experiential design: using each channel for what it’s uniquely best at, while weaving a relationship with the other channels.

What are some of your favorite projects that you’ve worked on at I-AM? One of our most transformative projects happened more than two decades ago with UK-based bank Abbey National—now known as Santander. Back then—and in many cases, still—banking spaces weren’t designed for customer experience; they were at best functional and universally grim. People had to go there to bank, as the internet was in its infancy.

Our approach was radical: it involved Costa Coffee cafes in the bank spaces—something unheard of at the time—but more significantly, we entirely re-thought the physical branch as a welcoming, comfortable, social space. We won many awards for it and showed the effectiveness of transforming long-established models through creative intelligence. With this, we had the power to improve customers’ days and impact performance.

We learned that even the most traditional sectors could be revolutionized with the right thinking and bold commitment on the client’s part. This work led us to where we are now as the go-to global innovators in repurposing the role of branch networks for banks, creating a realm of disruptive, powerful and valuable innovation in design for financial brand experiences around the world.

I love shifting perceptions. So, while I’ve been involved in some lovely design work for many retail brands already considered desirable—for instance, I love the store in Knightsbridge we did recently for fine wines and whiskies retailer Hackstons—I’m actually proudest of the projects where we’ve changed negative brand perceptions to positive ones, such as our work for Hamptons Estate Agents and KFC.

As someone who typically focuses on spatial design that speaks to audiences, how can branded experiences use emotions to forge deeper connections with customers? Emotions drive human decisions more so than rationality. Any behavioral psychology study confirms this. A brand experience isn’t just about how a space looks; it’s about how it makes people feel. That’s why we focus on making environments that are not just brilliantly functional but also inspiring, engaging, and maybe disruptive and surprising—or maybe comforting and reassuring.

The key is to understand human needs, latent motivations and values, and how these create behaviors—whether it’s the calming effect of biophilic design; the associations evoked through materials, colors, sound and scent; or the impact of well-placed lighting. When people feel something, they remember it. The best experience design deliberately orchestrates this while making it resonant with the brand that provides it.

You mention that, in order to create truly out-of-the-box ideas, brands need to embrace the unpredictability of their consumers. Why do you advocate for counterintuitive thinking in this approach? Real innovation doesn’t come from following the expected path—it comes from breaking established rules. If you only ever design for what people think they want, you’ll never surprise them. The unpredictability of human behavior and reactions is what makes design so exciting—you have to embrace it rather than try to fully predict or control it. Experiment, play and develop the things you discover that people respond to.

Sometimes, the best solutions come from taking an idea and flipping it on its head. We encourage our clients to think beyond convention and take calculated risks that lead to real, meaningful new models for deeper, more motivating and powerful engagement and interaction.

While AI seems like a useful tool for helping designers ideate, what are the dangers of overrelying on it? AI is powerful, but it should be an enabler and synthesizer of human vision, not a driver. It can generate data-driven suggestions, but the quality of its creation depends on the quality of the brief that a human gives it. It can replicate much in terms of functional skills but not the nuances of human emotion, storytelling and cultural sensitivity.

As with the advent of any other game-changing tool like photography, print and the microchip, the future of design should be human-led with AI supporting, not replacing, the creative process. We need to establish our relationship with AI. If we lean on it too much, we risk losing the very thing that makes design powerful: human intuition and creativity.

From where have you been getting inspiration lately? Not in global politics, that’s for sure.

Lately, in an ever-noisier world of stimulation, I find myself returning to nature as the ultimate guide and inspiration for the best possible design. Nature exhibits a perfect balance of form, efficiency and beauty—the latter emerging from the former. Evolution is the original form through function. In this respect, I love to see a much-needed counterpoint to the recent, depressing macropolitical changes—the continued harnessing of creativity, science and intelligent vision to rebalance the relationship between people, commerce, nature and planet. Fixing our environmental crisis will only work by blending commercial gain with doing the right thing; one cannot be at odds with the other. Big business needs to be in the solution mix without paying lip service to fundamental issues and leaving themselves open to accusations of greenwashing. The Earthshot Prize is a brilliant source of inspiration that shows what can and must be done, but the solutions need to be rapidly scaled up.

I also draw inspiration from music and storytelling—narratives that move people on a deep level. The best architecture and my travels also inspire, but on a daily basis, our incredible team here at I-AM is my main inspiration and driver to do my best.

Do you have any advice for people just starting out in design today? Follow your passion, not the pressure. Don’t let well-meaning advice steer you away from where your heart wants to go. The best designers are those who combine curiosity with conviction and embrace both logic and imagination to create unique results.

Never be afraid to take risks, but be professional—a lesson I learned the hard way in a pitch for the British Film Institute in I-AM’s early days. One of the partners at the time decided that we needed to be really memorable, and the way to do that was by dressing up as iconic film characters. We met a rather surprised client in full costume as Batman, Darth Vader and Zorro—and then we never heard from them again. So be creative, but also know how to read the room.

I’d also suggest not to follow trends slavishly. It inherently means you’re not originating with what you uniquely bring to redraw boundaries, which, to me, is at the heart of the creative industry.

Most of all, remember that whether you’re designing a brand, a product or an experience, you should always start with human connection. People will always respond to great design, because great design responds to people. ca