NY design teams rally after attack

Design consultancies in the US and those with US offices are getting back to work with a ‘business as usual’ ethos, following last week’s catastrophic events.

The major players report that all staff are accounted for and that no one has been directly effected. So far no projects have been cancelled or postponed.

Attik’s New York office was in the exclusion zone around the World Trade Center and was only able to get back to work on Monday. Its server was down and its office cordoned off ‘so every project has been delayed by at least a week. We can’t react to projects if we can’t get into the office’, says Attik co-founder Simon Needham.

Deepend is waiting to see how its main client investment bank Saloman Smith Barney will recover from the collapse of its building. Deepend managing director James Alger says, ‘There is a potential impact on us. There is a concern in the medium term, but I am confident that these events will not effect us in the long term.’

Morgan Stanley, which was based in the World Trade Center, was a client of Landor Associates, but the consultancy had already completed projects and was not working on any new projects.

Enterprise IG chief executive Patrick Smith comments, ‘Things are pretty much back to normal. The office was up and running on a reduced scale the next day. We have a slug of revenue from US clients, but none have been directly hurt by events, either in terms of personnel or of revenue.’

FutureBrand’s office was closed last week with employees working from home or taking part in the relief effort.

At the time of the attacks it had staff in United Arab Emirates for client meetings with Emirates Airlines and Saudi Aramco and it took three or four days to get them back to the UK, FutureBrand Corporate managing director Christopher Nurko says. Nurko says that its travel clients have committed to completing existing projects.