Unfiltered ramblings of a designer finally thinking with clarity:

I find that having this blog as a means to write down how I feel about my life and surroundings is typically more cumbersome and impersonal than anything, but I feel like I should start writing things down again, so I guess here goes:

I’ve spent a good deal of my late adolescent and now early twenties pursuing an education and (eventually) a career in design, but most of the time I find myself so bogged down from the tedium of autoCAD and Photoshop that I forget that I’m actually designing. I suppose you could say that the technology of design often impedes my ability to remember what I’m even doing. I’ve always had a love for hand drafting, and while my skills as an artist are always in ongoing development, doing everything by hand often makes me feel like I’m doing a more effective job at actually getting somewhere in my designs. Don’t get me wrong, autoCAD has been an absolute godsend ever since I switched from hand drafting to computer drafting; but I never feel quite as accomplished when I step away from a seven hour autoCAD session as I do after spending all day sketching and rendering scenes for whatever project I may be working on.

Part of this sinking feeling I get when I approach all the technological advances in design really has only contributed to my ability to question my own chosen profession over the last eight months of my student career. So I suppose after all this monologuing, I’ll finally get to the point: what does interior design truly mean to me?

I always grew up obsessing over shows like Trading Spaces, and even Candace Olsen’s early design show on HGTV (Remember Chico the lighting dude, anyone? Anyone?), and at the ripe age of 8 or 9 I had decided that it was my duty to decorate the house I grew up in. My mother humored me, and still continues to humor my decorating and design sensibilities from time to time, but even as a child I remember playing with the ideas of using hanging drapes as room dividers, and begging my parents to let me tear down walls to modify all three bedrooms that still remain intact and untouched on the second floor. In the thirteen or fourteen years I spent living in that house I must have painted, repainted, and re-decorated my bedroom at least five times. At one point I even had a custom-built loft bed that had a slide that doubled as a chest of drawers (bought at a random garage sale, and was eventually painted the most vibrant teal you could imagine). Growing up, I had a flare for decorating, and there was no one in the world who could stifle my excitement for decorating and design.

But eventually I grew up, and through my early teens I studied music (which will always be my first love) and I got into sports and boys, and eventually all the decorating I did as a wee one turned into a distant memory. But by the time college rolled around for me, I had all but realized that the Carnegie Hall performances, the trips to China, and the international Barbershop conventions I had become so privy to as a young vocalist were probably not going to be opportunities I’d be afforded as a professional opera singer. Despite my true sadness at giving up music as a profession, I had begun to rekindle my interest in design. Starting as an undergrad at Arizona State, I really fell in love with the psychology behind design. The idea that there were people in the world whose sole jobs were to make spaces “work” for the general public seemed so genuinely intriguing and inevitably became the reason I wanted to get involved with interior design. I suppose you could say that as an 18 year old, my first design epiphany sounded a lot like “Hey! Interior design isn’t just about making things look pretty, it actually helps people function.” 

For me design really isn’t just about finding the best way to make a space look aesthetically pleasing, it’s about finding the best solution to the problems caused by human living. While creating spaces that are visually pleasing to its inhabitants does play a key role in design, design for me is about finding out how people live, and creating the best solutions that compliment the living habits of the people inhabiting those spaces.

Design to me is about making people happy. Design isn’t supposed to just make a superficial statement about how things look, and it’s not always about having the most coveted designer piece. It’s about finding the best way to live, and finding the best ways to make your life both beautiful and functional.