BOSTON — Walking into 326 A Street in Boston, Mass., you realize right away that this is not your typical office. Twelve desks, cluttered with fabric samples, colored pencils, Diet Cokes, drawings, legends, and schedules are immersed in the mess. Suffolk interns with stressful looks on their faces are bustling about, crossing paths with each other as they try to make their deadlines.

Directing the scene, making sure that everyone knows what they are supposed to be doing, and when to get it done by, is an energetic and stylishly dressed redhead named June Ericson.

Ericson is a professional interior designer who has spent her entire career in Boston and who hires mostly all Suffolk interns from the New England School of Art and Design at Suffolk University (NESAD) program. She is the senior associate at J/Brice Design International, a nationally-ranked interior design firm specializing in the worldwide hospitality industry, and was certified by the National Council of Interior Design Qualification in 1981. Having an interesting office that houses the largest library of materials, samples, furnishings, and finishes in Boston, however, is not what makes Ericson so interesting.Ericson earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts with Cum Laude distinction from the University of Dayton, Ohio, in 1974. She originally started out her career designing private homes and offices in Boston’s suburbs but switched over to hospitality design in 1993, when she joined J/Brice.

“I wanted to work internationally, travel more, and design more creatively,” Ericson said. “Offices are designed for people who make a product. When you design a hotel, you are designing the actual product. Hotels are willing to spend larger chunks of money, they renovate more often, and they buy in such volume that you get to custom design almost everything.”

“In this field, you can’t be creative fast enough,” Ericson has said about her career. While creativity is a key component of her profession, she is quick to point out that interior design is much more than matching curtains to carpets.

“My job entails being in charge of the budgeting, furniture, fixtures, lighting plans, and the supervision of construction,” stated Ericson.

“I practice interior architecture of hotels, which includes everything from meeting with a client who has an idea for a hotel, to coordinating layout plans of the interior with the architect’s plans of the exterior,” she explained.

Ericson has worked for many hotels of distinction in the U.S., including Marriott Hotels and Resorts, Hyatt Regency hotels, Sheraton Hotels, Doubletree Guest Suites, Hilton Hotels, and Holiday Inn. She has also worked overseas on hotels in Barbados, Venezuela, United Arab Emirates, and India. Her current project is a new hotel in Qatar that is being built in conjunction with the Asian Olympics.

She has won several awards, including “Most Upscale Hotel of the Year,” from Lodging and Hospitality in 2004. She has also served on the boards of The Network of Executive Women in Hospitality, and The Institute of Business Designers.

During a typical day, Ericson has a lot to get done. “I am constantly corresponding with clients, dealing with vendors and delivery issues, and working on several design projects simultaneously,” she said. “It’s a tremendous juggle.”

Because she is a top executive of the company, second only to her quirky boss, Jeffery Ornstein, she not only has to worry about her work but also the work of her colleagues. At J/Brice, Ericson is the designer with the most experience. Her job requires her to delegate tasks, direct everyone else in the office, and help them with their projects.

“June is an inspiring mentor,” said Jan Merrit, who has been working at J/Brice for over five years. “She is really good at coming up with fresh, creative ideas.”

When asked about her favorite part of her job, the list is endless. “Custom designing anything I can dream up and then seeing it come to reality and walking into a space I designed and seeing it completed is at the top of the list,” said Ericson.

She compares designing to “a gigantic jigsaw puzzle, where each one of the pieces is something you have to design based on real problems.”

One of her least favorite things about the field, however, is all of the deadlines. “There are limited windows of time when the construction of a hotel can actually occur,” she said. “You also have to work with very tight budgets.”

Even though it can be stressful, Ericson would still recommend this field to anyone with a flair for art and design. If you want to become an interior designer, Ericson advises “getting into a good program with a strong internship opportunity, such as the one NESAD offers.”

“I suggest taking lots of different types of internships in all types of interior design,” said Ericson.

Ericson’s love of her career is evident when she talks about how she will never retire. “I’ll retire from a company, but [I] will never retire from design completely,” she states. “It’s not just a job, it’s a passion.”

Even at 53, Ericson still has the desire to open her own company and work on small projects, something that she has done in the past. “That’s the beauty of design, you can do it anywhere in the world, in any environment.”