Two years ago we had the opportunity to buy a ground floor office space on Hayling Island. At the time we were working out of a dated and tired rented space that had done us well, but we were ready to move on and make something our own. We started by drawing inspiration from interiors and spaces that we had seen and loved and put together a mood board. Pinterest helped in the process but it can be a little too broad, luckily we had a fairly clear direction from the start about the materials and finishes we wanted to work with.

One of our favourites specifically was the Surf Saturdays store interiors. They always had a light / modern and coastal feel to them that we wanted to replicate for our space as it felt right for our brand and location by the seaside. For materials we chose concrete, wood flooring (a must with 3 dogs), cedar cladding, worn brick and galvanised pipework for a slightly industrial feel. With the space being limited in size it was really important to get the scaling and layout right. We focused on what was important to us and tried to keep things simple.

The aim was to be able to scale up to 16 people with a separate meeting room, and also squeeze in a kitchen and two bathrooms. It did seem impossible to start with, as we only had 750ft² to play with in the main room. To help us visualise the space we built prototypes in SketchUp and changed our minds several times before we found the best layout. Aesthetics, usability and simplicity were key in our decision making. We wanted the space to look and feel beautiful with clean lines but more importantly the environment had to inspire creativity. We knew it was going to be important to have the ability to go from individual to collaborative work throughout the day. Keeping that in mind we decided to stick with bench desk layouts we had previously where design and development teams sit directly opposite each other. Collaboration has been at the core of our approach to work since we started in 2011 so the new space had to support and nurture that.

Picking Anglepoise® for the lighting was a given from the off. We’re all massive fans of the brand and having worked closely with them on their websites over the last four years it was a no brainer. For the desk lighting we picked the Type 75™ Maxi pendant, as we like the clean simple lines and the graphite grey matched our palette perfectly including our Herman Miller Mira 2s (our treat to ourselves). For the additional wall lighting we went with four Type 1228™ Metallic in silver lustre. Their industrial aesthetic was the perfect finishing touch and blended in seamlessly with the galvanised conduit. We’ve been working in the new space for about a year now and feel we've almost kicked out the bugs. We recently added some more desking to accommodate a few new faces and are considering where to put the hot tub, but that may be one bridge too far!