My friends from Enbridge, Jayne and Louise, were instrumental in Fusion getting the opportunity to win our first big corporate newsletter project. And that project led to developing an employee newsletter for Purolator, and meeting Merry and Tracie. Our history with Purolator stretches from 2001 until today, our longest running client. We’re working with an entirely new group of people from 24 years ago, but the experience is just as wonderful as it was back then. These two newsletters were our foot in the door to corporate communications work, which today makes up more than 80% of Fusion’s ongoing projects.

Besides corporate work, Fusion’s early days were split evenly with conference collateral jobs. Our relationship with Congress Canada, and clients like Pam, Heather, Maria, Sharon, Jennifer and Jackie, went on for almost a decade. We worked on a lot of great projects for Congress Canada and it’s amazing team, but one of the most pivotal jobs was for ISLUA (International SL1 Users Association, a Nortel Networks telephony hardware related group; this later became INNMUG, International Nortel Networks Meridian Users Group, which then disappeared altogether when Nortel the company did the same). We worked on a large suite of pieces for these annual conferences. Originally connected through Congress Canada, Fusion began working with INNMUG directly when they hired their own internal meeting and event planner, Katherine.

Fusion has done a handful of great logo and visual identity systems for clients over the years, but the first big one was for the Ontario Energy Association (OEA). Our contacts Pat and Adam were amazing to work with. Somehow they sensed that our inexperience was outweighed by our drive to impress from a creative, but also a service, perspective. Norm and I were so young, and so nervous when it came time to present our concepts to the OEA’s Board of Directors, that our presentation went completely off script when Norm lost his voice and I had to present the entire two hours, all the while trying to keep my own level of panic in check. But Pat was always supportive. She gave us a chance, and we developed all of the assets to give the OEA an origin brand that they could be proud of.

Fusion hasn’t focused much on submitting work to award shows, mostly because I have an allergy to paperwork, and these processes involve a lot of paperwork. BUT, luckily, Sarah has somehow found time over the years to put our work in, many times unbeknownst to me, so it is always an amazing surprise when we are told that we have won. Our first award was from the Registered Graphic Designers of Canada (RGD), for a collaboration with a great photographer friend, Leni. We did a fun pet project that was a combination of her unique work and our design and copy, and it wasn’t created for anything other than as a creative outlet, but it turned out we weren’t the only one that thought that our work was cool. Who knew?

If there is one key trend with Fusion over its 30 year journey (so far), it’s that design is very much about people. The people we work with, the audiences that we are communicating to, and the people on our team. People make or break the project vision. They make or break the process. They make or break the success of the solution for the provided design challenge. And when everyone works together, magic happens.

Reminiscing about all of these people and projects from our past, I’ve noticed some other trends…