What an eventful and exciting week it has been for me! On Wednesday I, along with many of you, participated in the wonderful portfolio speed review session. What a helpful experience it was! I received great feedback about what I need to improve. I also loved the opportunity to meet and network with several local professionals. Immediately following the review, Lauren and I went to a great networking event at ADAC. It was put on by Design Collective Atlanta and included networking and a panel discussion of professionals that discussed the pros of utilizing trade only showrooms. By the end of the event, I had met and traded business cards with a number of designers and showroom reps.
As if that wasn’t enough excitement for the week, I also had to present my 45 hour candidacy review this morning. This was the culmination of my first half of work at SCAD Atlanta. Although it was extremely nerve wracking to discuss all of my work for the professors, I received excellent feedback and appreciated the opportunity to hear what the professors though of my work.
What exciting experiences have you ladies had recently related to the field of interior design?
Our class discussion on professional practice, as well as the professional portfolio review session, led me to look for more information on successful branding and portfolio presentation techniques. DesignIntelligence’s Harold Linton posted an article on how to create “An Enviable Design Portfolio” and had some helpful tips. The portfolio allows an interior designer to show others their work and design vision in an unexpected way.
There are a variety of formats, whether in a bound pamphlet, artistically crafted book, personal website, or boxed set of individual works. He suggests that no matter which form you choose, it is important to have coherence and modesty. “Plain is better than fancy; simple much better than complicated. The portfolio is a tool for conveying a sense of the work; it should not be an advertisement for itself,” says Linton.
A tailored portfolio is thought to be the best tool you can bring to a job interview, where it can establish a great first impression. It’s best to have a presentation that clearly communicates and supports your design. “Recently, the trend is toward all-digital initial contact, such as an introductory e-mail containing a PDF file of a resumé and PDF teaser/mini-portfolio sent to potential employers. Advantages are that they can reach a larger audience quickly, and they will likely connect with the more technologically savvy design employers,” Linton suggests.
He also recommends that if you attend a career fair, you should bring a single page sheet with a well-organized grid of sample images of work on the front, and a background resume and contact info on the reverse. This is helpful because it is unique, portable and easy for them to take back to the office to discuss with colleagues. A career sheet could lead to an invitation to a full portfolio review and interview for a possible position.
However, the print portfolio is still considered the most practical and standard to our industry. It should be a graphic history of skills and accomplishments to promote yourself to potential employers. Linton writes, “The portfolio tells me about the abilities of its designer to communicate ideas and images in graphic form… I can even judge how well they have managed their time in either overdoing the portfolio design or in having established an efficient process for preparing it.”
A good portfolio should illustrate your strengths and show an understanding of format, graphic design, typography, concept development, problem solving and business communication skills. It is also helpful to not only represent your design work, but also be shown in such a way that a design philosophy is present. The goal is to sell yourself and your abilities while demonstrating uniqueness to make a strong and lasting impression.
Beijing china At Night, Retrieved from http://world-visits.blogspot.com/2011/10/beijing-china-at-night.html
The real estate market in China has changed rapidly. As China continuously becomes a magnet market for developers and investors, its high potential markets and lucrative sites has been transferred from big cities (e.g., Beijing and Shanghai) to second-, and even third-tier cities. More and more train and infrastructure systems are developed in these cities symbolizing prosperous urban growth. With the growth of these cities, an eager desire of high-quality living and shopping experience is expected by residents, which implies updating commercial amenities is also required. As a result, the pattern of China’s market is undergone drastic change.
According to a market analysis from Larson (2011), when newcomers to China’s market pursue commercial development, two main challenges should be aware: 1) what operations should be taken to successfully get into the new market; and 2) what strategies that helps to accomplish sustainable design are once we get into the market. Because of less experience in commercial estate markets in China, developers and designers may receive challenges of commercial estate markets comprising of staffs, time, and geography. Well training staffs, short framing time, and multiple locating teams are all resource consuming. The balance among more opportunities, less time, and fewer staff coupling with creative architecture and experience, quality and different features, and company brand promise is very important to designer as well.
The issue of energy efficiency, building performance and sustainability are commonly accepted and applied to western countries; but this issue just received attention from China’s market recently. The Chinese government and developers start to realize that energy and sustainability is necessary since several experts attempt to persuade them that using building-focused strategies can help to accelerate the concept of sustainability. However, efficient growth of markets seems to be more important and attractive to the government and developers because the consideration of sustainable practices exhibits less economic incentive. Besides, weak relationship with transactions, lack of knowledge in sustainability, and inappropriate design processes are all reasons that turn down sustainable practices in China.
In order to confront these challenges and have a deeper foot in China’s commercial estate market, Larson suggested five strategies for developers and designers. First, partnership between developer and design firm is important. Second, utilizing an integrated team (a team includes engineering and marketing consultants) from the beginning can contribute a clear decision in early stage and help designer-developer team to form the activity of the design team, including the local design institute. The third strategy is to align with local design institutes that help designers and developers to reach better results. In addition to create strong business relationships, the fourth strategy is to seek any opportunity to work for remarkably successful companies and be a part of their delivery team because these big and successful companies, now moving their business to Asia, can provide designers more opportunities to work in China’s new market. Last, creating a unique program management is essential, especially good for developers when they have many projects at different locations simultaneously. With the approach of defining the development and brand criteria as well as allowing flexible design with customized and individualized can create predicable, repeatable, and standardized, unique, and quality results for fast-moving projects.
In sum, as an emerging designer, it is important for us to realize that interior design markets have become global business; especially a current trend is that many enterprises are transferred from western to east countries. Thus, designers should have more ambitious goals and unlock themselves from regional or national to international business. To be successful, we also should be prepared for, aware of, and responding to any existing and ongoing change in our environment. In fact, settling business to emerging markets earlier can assist design firms to consolidate their relationship with markets and create more opportunities. However, to penetrate new markets is not easy. Understanding the properties of markets and borrowing the experience from successful design firms may be the best way to get start.
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Larson, Gary. (Sep., 2011). Design in China: The Next Wave. DesignIntelligence. Retrieved from http://www.di.net/articles/archive/design_in_china_next_wave/
I really enjoyed Lauren’s presentation this week on Professional Practice. There are so many different aspects to our industry and it seems like there are constantly new trends, products, and practices to keep up on! Attending industry events is a great way to not only keep up with the latest and greatest, but also a wonderful way to network and get your name out in the community. One of the largest events of the year is right around the corner and I wanted to give everyone some information about it in case they would like to attend!
Here’s a brief history and overview of NeoCon.
History of NeoCon
The history of NeoCon is an important aspect of today’s design community. This nationwide event has evolved into a well known and respected trade show throughout the world. Designers are constantly being kept on their toes to provide the most innovative and creative product ideas in order to accommodate both the public’s design needs, as well as their desire for fresh, inspiring products.
When NeoCon, (The National Exposition of Contract Furnishings), debuted in 1969, 750 exhibitors filled the 222,000 square feet of space in The Merchandise Mart. In 2002, over 1,000 exhibiting manufacturers of commercial and residential furnishings flocked to The Merchandise Mart to claim a showroom within the 1 million square feet of available space. In recent years the show has expanded to Baltimore and Canada due to its tremendous success and each year, over 40,000 people come to Chicago to attend NeoCon. The grand scale of this event is what makes it both memorable and successful.
NeoCon is now considered the largest trade show of its kind in North America. Complete with 700 showrooms and exhibits, NeoCon offers a unique combination of residential and commercial furnishings in one convenient location. Professional designers and architects can journey from product seminars and special events to furniture exhibits with ease. The demand for NeoCon will continue as various emerging commercial industries grow and transform. (http://www.neocon.com/showinformation/history/)
There are so many great opportunities to not only educate yourself on new products, but also attend seminars from experienced designers in a wide range of topics, special events for students, and to top it off there’s always a fun showroom party to attend! It’s always a lot of fun and a great way to explore Chicago in your down time. I’ll be attending this year and am most excited to hear Ian Schrager speak!!!!! I hope to see some of you there!
I was very interested in one of the topics that our guests talked about during the roundtable of retail design that I hosted last week. As you may remember, we talked about how retailers such as Target are trying to localize their shopping experience. While I was searching on this topic, I came across an article that talked about local relevance. The article talks about the new trend in retail design that provides more authentic shopping experience for consumers. As it is very common in the USA that the same brands have the same lay out and products in different branches, so there is no visual clues whether you are shopping in New York or Atlanta. Some brands like Starbucks and McDonalds are changing their store concept in a way that becomes more localized. Also, as it mentioned in the article there is a trend in small-scale retail. Charles Sparks, CEO, President, and Creative Director for Charles Sparks + Company in Westchester says, “The business model of doing more with less continues to translate to smaller, more focused assortments in smaller, more efficient store formats, targeting more narrow audiences,”
For me as a person who did not grows up in the American culture, the way stores works here was a big shock . In Iran, we do not have a lot of these kinds of big supermarkets. There are some, but the major center for everyday shopping is at local supermarkets. They are designed based on the local neighborhood. Products that they provide for purchasing are mostly based on the demographic and household income. You cannot find certain products in the neighborhood that people are less capable in buying. Also, beside this business view the fact that each one of them is unique and provide certain service make them visually more attractive. I find it very boring and less attractive that Target or Publix shops as an example look the same in all over the nation. They have the same layout which might provide more convenience for the user, but it is less visually attractive and interesting.
I was truly inspired by our wonderful presentation on emerging materials. I think that we as designers need to really stay on top of learning about new materials in our industry, both to provide the best services we can for our clients and to stay in front of trends. I figured that it would be helpful for us to begin to collect some class resources on emerging materials, so I have begun our collection!
The two topics of this week were so interesting that they kept me thinking of technology and emerging materials within this word “BALANCE” all the time. As designers, how do we locate ourselves in the rapid changing of technology? I love to be updated with new things, but not to be so overwhelmed when things move too fast. I noticed the key word that had been repeated over and over, which is “personalize”, and I totally agree. Despite how fast technology develops, I will be ready to accept new technologies as long as I can feel my personal spaces and personal belongings with all my five senses.
BMW Welt is an good example. “Housed in a spectacular complex of buildings, BMW Welt is designed to be experienced with all five senses. At the Technology and Design Atelier, for example, you can see, hear and feel BMW technology and design” (German National Tourist, 2012). Take a look at the interior spaces where all the new and high technologies about cars are displayed, you will see how the building was fantastically designed with the look of a futuristic space. However, the function of the building and the way it promotes to the visitors are truly human friendly. Tour guides, interactive activities and event forum provide good social communication and a very personal experience.
Figure 1: BMW Welt and Museum guided tour
Figure 2,3,4,5,6: BMW Welt Interior
You may feel overwhelmed by the high ceiling and the extremely large space. Now see the difference when the ceiling is lowered.
Figure 7: BMW Welt Interior
Figure 7: BMW Welt Interior
Figure 8: BMW Welt Out door event forum
Figure 9: BMW Welt and Museum display
Notice that all these spaces are where attendees’ conversation takes place, where people meet or hang out, and where products are displayed. With this design solution, people might not feel lost the space. This somehow expresses the balance in design that I am trying to discuss. We can create a very high tech environment, but we should always remember the spaces that virtually house the occupants.
Alexander ceramic tile, designed by Giles Miller. Retrieved from http://retaildesignblog.net/2012/02/07/alexander-ceramic-tile-by-giles-miller/
In this week, we had three professors from GT. – Dr. Jonathan Colton from Industrial Design, Dr. Ellen Do from Architecture, and Dr. Jeannette from the Center of Biologically-inspired Design. They all brought us different thinking and ideas about the emerging materials which I think are all important to interior design.
From the discussion with Dr. Colton, he brought an insight of Cradle to Cradle. Dr. Colton pointed that there are still concerns for its philosophy. His point makes me to think sustainable materials in a deeper level. We have been largely poured by idea to use sustainable and green materials since the beginning day of interior design program. However, we never think about the producing process of these products, their prices, and their potential influences in the end of the product cycle. It is true that inventions of sustainable/cradle to cradle materials are still immature in market. We need to face the problem that how we balance with the limited budget and application of sustainable materials in our project because materials got certifications from cradle to cradle are too expensive to be widely applied into interior design. Besides, some materials adapted the emerging technologies which we never know what they will affect the environment. For example, Nano particles are now popular and often used for the coating of many materials has been discovered that they might be harmful for plant’s DNA or human’s brain and kidney (NIST, 2012; Kanpp, 2011). There are also some companies announced that their products are made to follow the philosophy of cradle to cradle but the true is only few of them have achieved the concept completely. Therefore, for interior designer, we should not in a hurry to use these emerging materials but stop and look before we make decisions. However, the points I gave are not to against sustainable but instead to stress the idea to “being sustainable wisely. Understand what you use for your project and what will be the long term risk of applications are really important to us.
Besides the discussion about problems of cradle to cradle, Dr. Do mentioned that “thinking outside the box” is important to designer as well. As an interior designer, we may not able to actually invent the “new materials.” However, we can try to design in different way. No matter it is to adapt new ideas from other fields or to think differently without self-limitation. It is regretful that we are supposed to be the most creative people in the fields but we usually are constrained by the considerations of buildings codes, standards, or limited to our insufficient knowledge outside interior design. An innovated design comes from the ability to integrate different information and knowledge. Therefore, I believe it is essential for interior designers to contact with different disciplines. Like Dr. Do said, “all you need to do is being creative, to dream, and then to contact with someone who is in different discipline that help your creation come true.” For people in design fields, we should not be afraid to dream and be creative, and we should not also limit the opportunities to be with different people from different majors.
Last but not least, Dr. Yen suggested us that we may borrow the design ideas from nature. She indicated that all design solutions have been shown by nature already. It was fascinated when she showed her research related to the folding and compact forms from nature and explained how they might be used to resolve the energy and material consumptions in design world. As interior designers, we use the colors, forms and materials to mimic nature but we rarely look for the nature structures and functions in solving space problems. I believe this might be the innovated solution for small space living, especially to apply the folding and compact ideas into furniture designs and configuration of structure designs. Besides, I was impressed by Dr. Yen’s charts. It is so true that human try to save time but use more energy and materials. I was also shocked that nature functions the world by four components but human used hundreds materials to achieve the same thing. This information makes me to rethink the materiality of interior design. Can’t designer just use fewer materials but achieve largest functions? This might be a difficult challenge but I believe we can do it!
It is always nice to meet people from different fields and hear their opinions from their aspects. I learned a lot from this roundtable discussion, and I hope you all enjoyed it too.
Reference ———————————————————————————————-
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). (April, 2012). Nanoparticles May Increase Plant DNA Damage, New Evidence Shows. Science Daily. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120418143801.htm
Knapp, Alex. (December, 2011). Nanoparticles May Cause Kidney and Brain Damage. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2011/09/20/nanoparticles-may-cause-kidney-and-brain-damage/
Interface FLOR has dedicated a section on their website to Biomimicry. Their Spring Leaf carpet tiles are inspired by the “organized chaos” of a forest floor. Instead of designing a perfect repeatable pattern this carpet system creates a completely random non-repeating pattern.
See the two part video below where John Bradford, VP of operations and Research & Development, discusses why Interface started mimicking nature to design eco-friendly products, how to turn concepts into design and offers tips on product innovation through biomimicry. Sustainable Innovation is podcast-based program designed to help companies better tackle innovation challenges and learn what global organizations are doing to sustain their product innovation processes.
Part One: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP3KMv-Aer0&feature=relmfu
Part Two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5fjeqylx28&feature=relmfu
The utilization of technology has become a critical tool in the management of today’s businesses. Software is now availableto help businesses optimize merchandise purchasing and planning; manage warehouse and supply chain functions; and help employees’ track information that may increase their individual sales figures, thus allowing them to be more productive.
Today, retailers are using a variety of services such as location-based indicators, social media and radio frequency identifiers; along with inventory readers, bar-code scanners and point of service (POS) systems that generate additional growth for previous investments. Retailers are also driving customer loyalty by providing a more personalized in-store experience. Efficiency in store operations has increased and digital signage provides greater insight for opportunities for improvement.
Technology has remarkably transformed in the past 10 years. A major company, such as Microsoft, has become a pioneer in creating new and innovative ways to use and apply this new technology. For the past several months, Microsoft’s Windows Embedded enterprise is laying the foundation for an entirely new classification. Identified as ”intelligent systems “, these operations will extend this type of enterprise software and cloud services out to everyday devices.
photo of : Kevin Dallas, general manager of Windows Embedded
According to Windows Embedded general manager Kevin Dallas, like so many other transformations established in the world of technology, the serge towards more intelligent systems is all about information.
“With today’s pervasive network connectivity, the emergence of cloud services and low-cost yet high-powered microchips, traditional embedded devices can now connect and participate as part of a broader IT infrastructure and exchange real-time data all the way to the customer’s fingertips,” Dallas says. “Intelligent systems offer endless possibilities for organizations to collect and act on information in real time, from understanding customer buying habits to tracking product shipments around the globe.”
“In the recently concluded 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and National Retail Federation conference in New York, Microsoft demonstrated their vision for Smartstore. The demo included a socially enabled virtual dressing room application called Swivel by FaceCake. FaceCake is powered by Kinect device. Swivel used Kinect camera to custom fit selected items for the person to try on and overlay them on his or her body. The demo also includes applications by other partners and shows great use of Microsoft Surface, Windows 7 based tablets and Windows Phone.” Microsoft
Intel and Macy’s are changing the cosmetics buying experience with Macy’s Beauty Spot. The super high-tech spot is a touch-screen kiosk built on Windows Embedded Standard 7. The display showcases display products, specific looks and how to create them; in addition to detailed purchasing information. The Windows Embedded Standard 7 technology is currently showcased in four stores and roll out 10 additional pilot sites.
“Intelligent systems are here today,” Dallas says. “They exist all around us. And now you can build amazing intelligent systems today on the Windows Embedded platforms, knowing you’ll have a direct path to upgrade and enhance those systems as Windows 8 rolls out.”
This text serves as a great overview of the range of materials available for designers’ creative freedom. If anyone is interested, I have a copy of this book, or it is available from ASID’s website. 
This text discusses emerging materials and their application possibilities in design and architecture. It is available from Amazon for under $20! 
Lastly, this text, titled Material World 3 is a compilation of over 100 materials and their applications. It is regarded as an encyclopedia of materials. It is available online from Amazon. 
