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dear design school grad, redux

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la quinta plan

Congratulations graduate!

You designed your way out of college with all of those sleepless nights and huge pots of coffee. I bet you know every show on television after midnight. Now that you’re ready to create the next greatest building interior, here are a few tips from the trenches (well at least the trench that I work from).

If design doesn’t feed your soul, don’t do it.

I was a senior in business marketing when I switched to design. Business school did not inspire me and someone suggested interior design. First I laughed (right, pick pillow and curtain colors for a living?) Then I started talking to professionals in the field. What I heard sparked a fire in me that I couldn’t articulate and hadn’t felt before. So based on my gut reaction, I added another two years to my college career and made the switch. I still can’t articulate the feeling, but I do know that if I am not creating, drawing and solving problems that create better lives for my clients, I don’t breathe as well.

If design itself doesn’t feed your soul you still have options: sales, facilities, move coordination. Find your niche.

There are no shortcuts.

When you graduate you won’t be designing the next cover project for Interior Design Magazine. You will be creating presentation boards, putting documents together that show other people’s designs to their best effect, putting together finish schedules, specifying furnishings that someone else chose, cleaning up the conference room. Your job is basically to make other people’s jobs easier. This is the path.

  • Study hard
  • Learn the amazing computer programs that are available to you and offer these skills every chance you get
  • When you finish a task ask for another
  • Expect to work long hours when a deadline is approaching and don’t make plans the evening before a presentation….you will have to cancel

I began my career in small design firms so that I was exposed to the full breadth of design projects. My projects weren’t spectacular (small office spaces, very basic tenant improvement work), but I learned how to run a project from start to finish. If you choose to begin your career for one of the larger firms, you may work on more prestigious projects, but you will do a smaller piece of them. You know your personality, so move in the direction that best fits who you are. And whatever you do, do it well. The devil truly is in the details…mess up the details and the senior designers in your firm won’t want you on their projects.

You are a problem solver first….never forget that.

Pretty isn’t the highest priority. Your first job is to solve your client’s problem, and before you can do that you must understand what the problem is. Research your client’s business, ask questions about your client’s lifestyle. Understand your client’s family, customers, employee needs…whatever is appropriate to this project. Determine the best way to make this project function so that your client’s life is better as a result. This is how you solve their problem. Then make it pretty or hip or cool or dark…aesthetics are important, just not the first order of business. A project that looks good but doesn’t work well is a failure and you won’t get hired again.

Learn all you can before you begin and then learn some more.

There are certificate programs and short degree courses. Take the long course. Design is not just color theory and lighting science, it is a way of looking at the world. The only way to get there is to take the long course…and understand that there is no end. In order to create successful design you will need to understand the world as it grows and changes. Keep reading, talk to experts in other fields, pick the brains of the contractors and fabricators you work with, travel, take pictures. The world is an exciting place and everything you learn will make you a better designer. Get accredited and certified in whatever areas you have interest. That alphabet soup behind your name helps to tell your story.

Pretty pictures aren’t built projects.

Part of every design job includes an understanding of the local jurisdiction’s rules, operating procedures and building codes. You learned some of this in school….learn more. Anyone can draw pretty pictures (well almost anyone), but can these pretty pictures be built? Learn how to research this information and the senior designers in your firm will be begging to have you on their teams. Even if this never becomes your area of expertise, know enough to ask appropriate questions as a design begins to gel. It seems to get more difficult all the time to navigate the myriad rules and regulations that sometimes feel like roadblocks, so get used to finding ways around. I learned early on (thanks to my friend Ed), that the best way to complete a project successfully is to meet with building officials before design has even begun. Explain the project goals and ask for guidance to avoid potential bumps in the road.

Welcome to the world of design! I hope it fills your soul and makes you as happy as it makes me.

Keep in touch,
Leslie
NCIDQ (this means I’ve studied and passed the national interior design certification exam)
LEED AP ID+C (this means I’ve studied and passed the LEED exam for interior design and construction, a green building certification)
CID (this means I’m a certified interior designer in the state of California and can sign my own drawings)

scheduling creativity

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Want to develop a better work routine? Discover how some of the world’s greatest minds organized their days. Click image to see the interactive version (via Podio).

Is creativity schedulable? Is that a word? I’d say probably no to both. But the creatives of yore did keep schedules and Mason Currey wrote a whole book describing their schedules. Then various others riffed off the book to create infographics (here and here). Above is my favorite by Podio…if you click through to the original then hover over the various colored indicators, Currey exposes some of the peculiar activities that our creative greats enjoyed. Anyone for an ice bath on the roof (Victor Hugo)? How about a walk (pretty much everyone)? Or a few bennies to boost creativity (Wystan Hugh Auden)?

Although each genius clearly had his or her own unique schedule, what they have in common is the existence of a schedule. I would posit that this is the key to unleashing creativity…develop a schedule then stick to it. I sat down and created a schedule for myself. It’s going up above my desk right now.

my schedule

So go ahead….make a schedule. See if it helps you to unleash your inner Picasso or Kafka or Freud. But stay away from the bennies.

Keep in touch,
Leslie

proposals are not jobs….chicken counting

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computer

Someone contacted me last week regarding a project that is a perfect fit for me. So I visited the job site, met the General Manager, spent hours learning about the project and walking the site, and quite honestly made a new friend. By the end of the day we were talking freely and I think getting on famously. He won’t be the final decision maker about which designer is hired for the project, but I’m certain his opinion will be counted. So do you think it’s time to start counting chickens? Maybe not.

After the meeting I went back to my desk and uploaded photographs, organized notes, and began my proposal. I have a standard format that I use, substituting information as necessary to customize it. I finished take 1 then sat back to read email and lo and behold there was an article about writing proposals and why we don’t win projects with our proposals. Thank you Jeff Archibald! Here are a few of Jeff’s thoughts, some of which might have cost me this project had I sent out my first draft (don’t worry….I didn’t send it).

  • The client isn’t a good match: do you have the skills and experience to provide what the client wants?
    • check
  • You didn’t set expectations: during your face to face did you tell the client how you work? What information would be in your proposal? What steps you would follow and why you are a good fit? Did you let the client get to know you as you were getting to know them?
    • check
  • No chemistry or bad chemistry: one of my favorite sayings is ‘never work with someone you wouldn’t share a meal with’. You need to build rapport from the first meeting.
    • check
  • Talk about the budget: it’s part of the project, and one of the most important components to your potential client. If they don’t have one, help them make one.
    • check
  • Don’t forget value: what will you bring to the project? Don’t just tell them what you cost…tell them how that cost translates to value. Will your design bring more customers? Higher prices therefore a better margin?
    • dang….missed this in the first draft
  • Differentiate yourself from your competition: what can you provide that your competitors won’t/can’t/didn’t think of? Why you and not them?
    • missed this one too
  • See the proposal from the client’s perspective: what will they get? How does this benefit them specifically? Be clear about their gain.
    • uh oh…missed that one too
  • Don’t disappear after the proposal goes out: check in once, twice, maybe more. Offer to talk through sticky items or anything unclear.
    • yes, as soon as I finish the re-write and send it out

The biggest change I made in the first draft was to add a cover letter that was personable and responded to those items that are missing in the nuts and bolts of the proposal. My proposals are long and wordy and full of minutae that describe the project. What they lack is me. So I added a heaping bowl of me, since in actuality it is me that will be doing the work and me that needs to get along with them and me that they are entrusting with their project. Seems like a no-brainer now that it’s done, right?

Keep in touch and I’ll let you know what happens,
Leslie

your design portfolio: listen to the cool kids

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photo-little-visuals-n-18

Now that tech designers have become the cool kids, they have a thing or two to say about, well, everything design. And considering the way tech is booming, the rest of us who design pretty much anything should probably be listening. Whether you are looking for work at a tech start-up or an architectural firm, the cool kids have some great advice. Pretty pictures aren’t enough to get you through the door anymore.

Ben Blumenfeld put together a great list for Fast Company. Here’s a modified version for those of us in the architectural design community.

  1. Include quality over quantity: Include high quality projects and the context surrounding them. More projects isn’t necessarily better. The projects you include need to tell your story without sidetracking a potential employer (do you really want to explain why the lighting isn’t well done on that otherwise awesome project?)
  2. Include a LOT of information about the projects in your portfolio: project background and context, your role, the work itself and process, success metrics, what you would have done differently.
  3. More info about your PROCESS: how did you get from problem to solution?
  4. Don’t skimp on visuals.
  5. Side projects: what do you do (creatively) when you’re not working? Employers hire all of you, so show off the 5-9 as well as the 9-5.
  6. Create an online portfolio, but carry a hard copy as well. I was at a job site last week working with a tile contractor. He was trying to describe something and pulled out a bound book he’d created with detailed images of several completed projects. We looked through and were able to talk through a solution based on his photographs. Presuming his finished work impresses me as much as his problem solving, I’ll certainly recommend him again.

So my next project is to re-create my own online portfolio. Give me a couple of weeks then check it out. In the meantime, how is yours looking?

Keep in touch,
Leslie

dear design school grad

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bronica

The best career advice I ever got was from my first year design instructor. She told me to find another major because I wouldn’t make it in interior design. She didn’t think I was good enough. I don’t know if she actually intended this as good advice or if she was just an old be-atch, but if not for her advice, and the follow-up advice that I got from my senior seminar instructor a few years later, I would be waiting tables at some old coffee shop right now.

Over the course of the last twenty years, I’ve spent many hours with people considering interior design as a career or who have just graduated and want to know what to do next. So here are a few tips from the trenches (well at least the trench that I work from).

1. If design doesn’t feed your soul, don’t do it.

I had a degree in french and was a senior in the marketing program at my university when I switched to design. One day in my senior year when I was slogging through yet another marketing plan my sis suggested I check out interior design. Not wanting to choose colors and pick furniture as a career I shrugged the idea off at first, then finally interviewed some instructors in the department as well as working professionals. What I heard sparked a fire in me that I couldn’t articulate and hadn’t felt before. So based on my gut reaction, I added another two years to my college career and made the switch. I still can’t articulate the feeling, but I do know that if I am not creating, drawing and solving problems that create better lives for my clients, I don’t breathe as well. That old instructor who told me I wasn’t good enough clearly didn’t understand me (or design)…and her lack of faith pushed me to prove her wrong so that I could keep breathing.

2. There are no shortcuts.

When you graduate you won’t be designing the next cover project for Interior Design Magazine. You will be creating presentation boards (meaning you’ll be gluing pretty pictures and pieces of fabric to cardboard), putting amazing documents together that show other people’s designs to their best effect, putting together finish schedules, specifying furnishings that someone else chose, cleaning up the conference room, basically making other people’s jobs easier. This is the path. Study hard, learn the amazing computer programs that are available to you and offer these skills every chance you get, when you finish a task ask for another, expect to work long hours when a deadline is approaching and don’t make plans the evening before a presentation….you will have to cancel. I began my career in small design firms so that I was exposed to the full breadth of design projects. My projects weren’t spectacular (small office spaces, very basic tenant improvement work), but I learned how to run a project from start to finish. If you choose to begin your career for one of the larger firms, you may work on more prestigious projects, but you will do a smaller piece of them. You know your personality, so move in the direction that best fits who you are. And whatever you do, do it well. The devil truly is in the details…mess up the details and the senior designers in your firm won’t want you on their projects. During my senior seminar I had a conversation with my instructor that I’ve never forgotten. I was lamenting the fact that I didn’t have the crazy out-there conceptualizing skills of one of my classmates. He told me that if he had to choose, he would hire me over her because I had skills that were marketable and that he could use. I could draw and write, my communication skills were excellent, and I enjoyed working down to the details. He counseled me to grow these concrete skills whenever I had the opportunity.

3. You are a problem solver first….never forget that.

Pretty isn’t the highest priority. Your first job is to solve your client’s problem, and before you can do that you must understand what the problem is. Every project begins with programming and if this isn’t done well, your design will fail. Before you even begin asking programming questions, you need to research your client and understand their business, how they work, what their employees do moment to moment and day to day, who their customers are. If this is a residential project you need to understand how your client family lives and what makes them feel comfortable, at home, happy. How they entertain and whether they love the outdoors or prefer a cozy fire inside. Then ask educated questions about the specific project and figure out how your design can fulfill their need and solve their problem. When I’m doing a restaurant project I need to understand my client’s business. If they are a full service restaurant, the operation will look very different from a fast casual lunch place. And if they are cooking three meals their kitchen will require more space than if they make sandwiches. Once you have solved the problem, then make it pretty…aesthetics are important, just not the first order of business.

4. Learn all you can before you begin and then learn some more.

There are certificate programs and short degree courses. Take the long course. Design is not just color theory and lighting science, it is a way of looking at the world. The only way to get there is to take the long course…and understand that there is no end. In order to create successful design you will need to understand the world as it grows and changes. Keep reading, talk to experts in other fields, pick the brains of the contractors and fabricators you work with, travel, take pictures. The world is an exciting place and everything you learn will make you a better designer.

5. Pretty pictures aren’t built projects.

Part of any design job, a big part, is understanding the local jurisdiction’s rules and operating procedures as well as local codes. Anyone can draw pretty pictures (well almost anyone), but can these pretty pictures be built? Learn how to research this information and the senior designers in your firm will be begging to have you on their teams. Even if this never becomes your area of expertise, know enough to ask appropriate questions as a design begins to gel. It seems to get more difficult all the time to navigate the myriad rules and regulations that sometimes feel like roadblocks, so get used to finding ways around. I learned early on (thanks to my friend Ed), that the best way to complete a project is to meet with building officials before design has even begun. Explain the project goals and ask for guidance to avoid potential bumps in the road.

So that’s my unsolicited advice….if you’d like more, feel free to contact me! And welcome to the world of design. I hope it fills your soul and makes you as happy as it makes me!
Leslie

my disruptive life

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l design disrupted

You know that I’m an interior designer specializing in restaurant design. You’ve read my bio. But you read my posts daily and wonder how does all of this writing fit with your understanding of what I actually do for a living? The answer is I’m practicing my own version of disruption.

Disruptive thinking is the term of 2014. And it follows close on the heels of design thinking. According to Fast Company, design thinking is a ‘proven and repeatable problem-solving protocol that any business or profession can employ to achieve extraordinary results’. Disruptive thinking takes this idea a step further and in a slightly different direction. To think disruptively you must look where you haven’t looked before to find first the problem that no one has yet discovered, then solve it creatively. Disrupt: Think the Unthinkable to Spark Transformation in Your Business, published in 2010, was written by Luke Williams, fellow at frog design’s New York office and an Executive Director at the NYU Stern School of Business. (frog design, if you will recall, was instrumental in helping Apple Computer create its design edge.) Luke Williams contends that finding the problem, disrupting the status quo, is the first creative step in the process. Much like scrum has transformed the way problems are viewed and solved, disruptive thinking transforms the way processes are viewed then re-defined and executed. According to Williams, there are 5 steps to disruptive thinking:

  1. Craft a disruptive hypothesis: be wrong at the start to be right at the end
  2. Discover a disruptive opportunity: explore the least obvious
  3. Generate a disruptive idea: unexpected ideas have fewer competitors
  4. Shape a disruptive solution: novelty for novelty’s sake is a resource killer
  5. Make a disruptive pitch: under prepare the obvious, over prepare the unusual

In my case, I’m at number two: discovering my opportunity. I’ve designed space for over twenty years and loved it, except the part where design separated me from the research and writing that feeds me. So on weekends and during my scarce evening hours (I am raising two kids remember), I’ve taken classes and written fiction and essays. Fun, yes, and a nice distraction, but not fulfilling. So I’ve battled with how to be both a designer and a writer for years and finally had that ah ha moment a few months ago….just do both and see where it leads! That is my Disruptive Hypothesis. I’m doing this by reading and writing every day about things that are connected with design, architecture and food. The only three things that I know for sure are that I am a designer, I am a writer and one feeds the other. By researching and writing from the perspective of a designer I am finding ways to meld the two, making me better at both.

As I continue to research and write, I learn daily about all of the possibilities out there and I get closer to disrupting the current system and finding a place we haven’t been before, a place where design and writing can work together that allows me to contribute meaningfully.

That is my very long winded answer to the many who have asked me….what do you do?

Have a great week,
Leslie

 

can scrum help interior design?

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image courtesy scruminc.com

I’ve been hearing and reading the word ‘scrum’ a lot lately, and not in reference to rugby. The word itself still makes me giggle and blush a little (my twisted mind takes it to a dark place). Scrum, it turns out, is more than just a group of very dirty people locking arms and huddling together across a grass field to get a ball from here to there. When applied to business, it is a fascinating management concept well worth study. Scrum, a type of  ‘agile design’, may be the fix that the worlds of interior design and architecture have needed for a long time.

background

Scrum is a term and an idea that was developed in the mid-eighties to move the software industry in a more productive direction. We have Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland to thank for setting the industry off on this path. The basic idea was born as a result of the repeated failures of the waterfall method of management. Edicts and pronouncements from top management that trickle down through the ranks to the worker bees (programmers in their world), are not efficient and lead to projects that are delivered both late and over budget. Using the scrum method, small, autonomous, multi-disciplined teams are formed. These teams work very closely, meeting frequently and with extensive input from all players, in short bursts on smaller pieces of a larger project. As input changes, dynamics change and each piece changes until eventually a working whole is formed. The teams are facilitated by managers whose purpose is to remove obstacles, not dictate what to do nor how to do it. A very different paradigm from the waterfall method of management with nary a Gantt chart to be found (sorry MS Project).

design process

Historically the design process has followed a singular linear path from inception through construction.

  1. Programming: gathering all necessary information from the client
  2. Concept development: determining how the design will meet both functional and aesthetic requirments
  3. Schematic design: creating a preliminary visual presentation for customer approval
  4. Design development: developing the details of the design to verify appropriateness in terms of function, cost and availability
  5. Construction documentation: documenting the design for permitting and construction
  6. Construction administration: aiding the construction team and verifying construction follows design intention

In my experience, many interior design and architecture projects go over budget and often struggle to meet a timely schedule. And the methodology for attempting to keep these two bad boys from continuing to occur is typically loud vocalizing from above. Not a very effective management style. And this doesn’t serve the bottom line or the customer. Based on the linear list above, there are a number of places where problems occur. To begin with, stages one through three are typically handled by a design team, then stages four through six are moved to a technical team with minimal overlap. In addition to switching teams mid-stream, there are a number of weak points at various stages. Weak points create problems that will cost unanticipated time and money.

  • Programming: clients change their minds, and often information either changes or is missed early in the process and must be amended or gathered later leading to changes in the final design.
  • Concept development: depending on the effectiveness of the designers involved, function can be subjugated to aesthetics or vice versa leading to a less than ideal solution.
  • Schematic design: because the client is only minimally involved in the process, the schematic design becomes a critical point at which communication becomes the most important factor. If the design is not well communicated, even a good design will send the designers back to the drawing board.
  • Design development: since this is where the project typically moves from the design group to the technical group, many issues that might have been averted early on by someone who understands detailing (no, you can’t really float a ceiling), now become problems to solve.
  • Construction administration: the project is now in the field being built by people who had nothing to do with how it got here. Even though a good design team will have worked with their contractors and fabricators during design, things always come up. The tile specified doesn’t have a bullnose available, the hvac requirements changed and now the lights don’t fit, someone forgot to measure the elevator and the countertop has to be craned into an upstairs window, etc.

a better path

Certainly not all firms manage projects the same way or fail in the same places. Some are better and some are not. But I wonder if this idea of Scrum might be worth a look. Bruce Feiler applied ‘agile programming‘ to his family with profound results. He describes the basics succinctly and his video is worth watching. If something developed for software works for children, then I posit that it would work quite well in the world of design and architecture. No offense intended.

Tell me what you think. This is an exciting area and well worth some investigation,
Leslie

say thank you

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photo courtesy lettersofnote.com

photo courtesy lettersofnote.com…entertaining letters by famous people

Apparently John Lennon wrote thank you notes. Jimmy Fallon is also a fan of thank you notes. And I want to thank Jimmy Fallon for bringing his version of gratitude into the limelight. They elicit a type of joy that probably isn’t what Emily Post was after.

I’m also a big fan of letter writing, especially thank you notes.  Once upon a time I even ran a website called ‘letters and paper’ and got to spend all of my free time writing about writing. Heaven for a writer, unfortunately not a very profitable use of time (luckily I spent enough time at the drafting table to compensate). Regardless of profitability, the handwritten note is  worthwhile because it creates a significant and pleasurable impact on both the writer and the recipient. The recipient gets a momentary break from their frenetically digitalized workday, and the writer experiences the moment of joy that any flight of gratitude offers.

There are plenty of reasons to hand write those notes in your business as well as personal world.

  1. Feeling grateful elicits happiness, so finding a reason to thank someone will make you happy.
  2. After a job interview a handwritten thank-you note tells the interviewer something about your humanity…bosses like to hire humans. And this will set you apart as the type of human that bosses like.
  3. If you want to leave a lasting impression, write a thoughtful note of thanks for a favor done or a gift received or time spent. Lasting impressions are like money in the bank of your future.
  4. Congratulations are a great opportunity to connect, and may inspire a thank-you note in response which makes two people happy (see number 1).

I create and keep notecards and stamps at my desk for both personal and professional note writing. Apparently I’m not alone…thank you notes even made the New York Times.

Keep in touch,
Leslie

ps: I just found these awesome notecards for booklovers…I wouldn’t suggest using them professionally unless  you are in the publishing business…but if you run into my husband you might mention that his wife is a book lover, hint, hint…;)

 

 

motivation: more than money

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apparently cute is motivating...go figure!

apparently cute is motivating…go figure!

Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist (now that is a new one for me), studied what motivates people at work.  What he found is that in our ‘knowledge economy’, vs the economy born of the industrial revolution, workers are more productive and willing to work harder if they are able to see a project all the way through, rather than just screwing the same nut onto the same bolt over and over again on an assembly line. No longer is a paycheck enough to satisfy most workers.  Meaning, creativity and ownership are also part of the mix that motivates ‘knowledge’ workers. This takes me back to when I graduated from college.  I spent the first 10 years of my career in small architectural offices for the explicit reason that I would have the opportunity to work all phases of my projects just because teams, and often projects, were smaller. And each of the team member’s contributions were larger. Whereas I had a friend who went straight to one of the very large architectural firms and spent a year developing bathroom fixture schedules for a very large building project.  She only lasted that first year before moving to a smaller firm.

If you are hiring employees, or are seeking a job, here are some things to keep in mind. A workplace where you can be happy and productive requires a cultural shift away from the motivation=money paradigm.  There is more than just money required to create a positive work environment and therefore happy employees.

  1. Seeing the fruits of our labor can make us more productive.
  2. The less appreciated we feel, the more money we want.
  3. The more difficult a project is to create, the prouder we feel of it.
  4. Knowing that our work helps others contributes to our unconscious motivation.
  5. The promise of helping others makes us more likely to follow rules.
  6. Positive reinforcement about our abilities may increase performance.
  7. Images that trigger positive emotions may help us focus.

So, apparently the ‘blame and shame’ management style that seems awfully prevalent out there isn’t very productive. Take a note, bosses! And watch the video. Your employees may stay around longer.

Happy nearly Friday,
Leslie