Final Statement

As we bid 2020 good riddance and welcome the new year on a preternaturally optimistic note, we find ourselves reviewing what was irrefutably an historic year, both globally and personally, and come away with some core personal and business issues to resolve. As a result, with quite a lot of self-reflection and discussions over this past year with my work and life partner, we’ve decided to close down FusionLab as a design firm after twenty strong years.

While we are still working with existing clients on design projects and will be bringing those to fruition, starting in 2021 we will not be taking on any new design projects. Instead, I am going to concentrate on my “other” career – photography and art. Both of those directions have picked up considerable steam in the last few years and I feel like they really blossomed into their own in 2019 and 2020. My partner will return to her roots as an artist and pursue her creative interests through painting and videography.

Since our founding in 1999 FusionLab operated as a unique design firm for a wide range of clients. With our art sensibility and keen desire to simplify and organize content in a beautiful way, we created websites for premier non-profit foundations and artists, such as Kenneth Noland, and The Joan Mitchell Foundation; designed iPad and iPhone apps for Moleskine and Thomson Reuters (and ourselves!); and were even in charge of Architectural Digest’s entire website for over five years.

Along the way I slowly realized that sitting in front of my computer, designing and thinking about content, while interesting, was not enough. I realized I needed to be outside, exploring the world with my camera. Whether that meant photographing beautiful old homes in the Hudson Valley for commercial purposes, or taking portraits of people in my hometown for my own purposes; or collaborating with my partner to make beautiful videos, makes a lot more sense, challenges me further and ultimately makes me happier. (See our latest video here).

After graduating from art school where I majored in photography, I originally assumed it would be best to separate my art work from my money-making endeavors, that I should silo the two and keep art-making more “pure”. What happened instead was that I fully immersed myself in making FusionLab the best design firm I could and left myself no time or energy to get serious about my own creative work, which I realize is not a new story, but there it is. So, perhaps on a correction course now, or just seeing things differently as I age, it’s time for me to live and breathe photography once more and let the creative juices flow between the commercial and art photography worlds as they will, letting them inform and not resist each other anymore.

To all our wonderful clients over the years, we thank you for your trust and support. We truly enjoyed the collaboration and would welcome working with you again, now on photography projects. Indeed with some of you that was always the case, or at least part of the portfolio we offered and worked on together through the years as web designers, creating content as well as shaping it for online presentation.

You are welcome to check out my commercial photography work and my personal art.

fusionlab.com will continue to exist with a past archive of our work and links to the websites above. I’d like to wish everyone a safe and creative decade and beyond.

Alon Koppel

Partner and Creative Director

FusionLab, Inc.