art + architecture + design

so you want to build a restaurant…..

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photo courtesy ed schipul, creative commons license in place

photo courtesy ed schipul, creative commons license in place

My father in law, a retired engineer, is very involved with his community’s activities and so was asking me questions about the process of building a new clubhouse and restaurant on their golf course. He’s truly one of the brightest people I know, and answering his questions about the process of building, especially where food service is involved, tells me that if he knows this little a lot of people could benefit from a bit more understanding. So I put together a list, then I added to it and expanded a bit, and probably told him way more than he and his cohorts in this project wanted to know.

If you’re embarking on a building project, especially if it involves food service, you may be interested. Here’s what I told Bob….

Dear Bob… For a $5.5 mil/12,000sf project I’m sure you want this done right. That’s not a very fat budget (although it sure sounds like a lot of money!), so you’ll need a team that can work efficiently together. They should all be involved at the very beginning in order to fold the various disciplines’ work product in without having to make major changes due to surprises. Surprises always add to the budget (ie: the lighting designer didn’t realize a duct would be required RIGHT THERE, the mechanical engineer didn’t know you were using THAT very hot piece of equipment, you want to remote the motors WHERE?). The architect can coordinate most of the disciplines. You should have an owner’s representative as well who works with the architect to manage the project (not a committee if it can be avoided….that will add time to every decision which ends up messing up your schedule and usually even affects budget). Also, who will run the facility? Ideally a representative for the food service operator will be involved from the beginning of the project as well. They will be able to shed light on operational needs that the owner may not have in mind.

Here’s a list of the people you will need involved in your project

  • Owner’s representative
  • Operator/operator’s representative
  • Architect who has done food service projects
  • Interior Designer who has done food service projects (may be employed by the architect or work as a consultant to the architect)
  • Lighting Designer (can  be coordinated by Interior Designer)
  • Kitchen Designer
  • Acoustical Engineer if necessary (work with architect and interior designer to determine if this is needed based on your program)
  • AV Designer (this is becoming more and more a specialty)
  • Engineers: electrical, mechanical, plumbing (great if they are LEED accredited as this is where you’ll need super efficiency) and they must be versed in food service projects
  • Structural engineer will be needed and should also be involved early. You don’t want to find out down the road that a structural column is required in a terribly inconvenient location
  • Since this is a ground up project, you may need additional engineering. Your architect can help you to determine additional needs

Your architect/design team can bring consultants. We’ve all worked with many consultants and will have opinions on who is easy to work with, efficient, knows their stuff, can creatively solve complex problems. Food service projects are always complex since there are so many moving parts and so many regulatory agencies to deal with: building department, planning department, health department, sanitation, etc.

Budget

Your architect/design team can also help you to create a budget. There are essentially 5 pieces to a food service project budget: FFE (furnishings, decorative light fixtures, etc), KE (kitchen and bar equipment), fees (architect/designer, consultants, permitting, etc), owner (POS system, art, signage, accessories, landscaping, table top, etc), GC. In order to stay on budget everything needs to be taken into account from the beginning.

Hiring a GC

Something that always comes up is how to select a general contractor. There are basically 2 methods: bid or relationship. Many people choose to bid  (in my opinion mistakenly) which means that a very complete set of drawings needs to be put together at the beginning of the process, several contractors bid the project, and one is selected. This leads to contractors trying to outbid one another by guessing and can lead to much higher costs (change orders) and difficult relationships. My recommendation is always to interview several contractors (your architect/design team can make recommendations based on the type of project and will even aid you in interviewing) then choose the contractor that you feel most aligns with your needs and communicates with you well. Then you can use your contractor to price the project at various intervals allowing the clubhouse to be designed and built within budget and hopefully avoiding change orders.

I hope this helps. I know it’s a bit more than you asked for, but figured you’d rather have too much info than too little. Let me know if you have questions or want any more info.

Same to you out there in the blogosphere…if you have questions, send them. Your project may be smaller than Bob’s (most are), and may not require the same list of consultants. But you will require someone to corral the project, not just make it pretty. That can and should be your design/architect team.

And if you have anything you’d like to add I’d like to hear that too. This business has a never ending learning curve.

Keep in touch,
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 future restaurant owner

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Dear Future Restaurant Owner, Yes, you can design your own restaurant. You have a vision and you make a mean (insert amazing recipe that you got from your mother here). You’ve worked in several restaurants or at least you’ve read articles about working in restaurants and you know how you want the dining room to […]

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more found art

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It’s summertime…well except for that bit of thunder and lightning earlier this week which made me think I was on the other coast…and even with our requisite fog, it’s a great time to get outside and see some ‘only in SF’ style art. A few months ago I started a list for you. If you haven’t checked out those favorite finds, you have quite a lot to get crackin’ on…go outside and impress your friends.

photos courtesy flaming lotus girls

Soma, Pier 14

Created by Flaming Lotus Girls, this giant interactive LED lit steel sculpture began life on the Playa. Soma represents the communication between neurons and hopes to engage us in thought about our own consciousness and humanity. Pretty lofty goals. The launch party is August 1 and will feature words, music, dancing and light….sounds very playa-esque! But please dress warmly.

Firefly, 525 Golden Gate Avenue

Firefly was created by Ned Kahn in collaboration with KMD Architecture and the SF Arts Commission. By day polycarbonate panels swing with the wind and appear to be rippling waves of glass on this twelve story structure. By night the movement of each panel triggers a tiny flickering LED light fed by on-site wind turbines.

Playland Revisited, Outer Richmond

Ray Beldner’s perforated stainless steel sculptures take us back to life at Playland, the amusement park that lived at the edge of the Pacific in San Francisco from the late 1800’s to 1972. Laughing Sal fascinated and frightened visitors for decades at the entrance to Playland. The cable cars delivered patrons young and old to the park. That giant (kind of scary) clown graced the entrance to the fun house, and the rooster reckons back to Topsy’s Roost, San Franciscan’s favorite dance hall according to some.

photo courtesy sfcurbed.com/michael holden
photo courtesy blissdance.us
photo courtesy blissdance.us
photo courtesy blissdance.us

Bliss Dance, Treasure Island on the Great Lawn

Another art piece that began life on the playa, Bliss Dance was created by Marco Cochrane. In his own words: ‘what I see missing in the world is an appreciation and respect for feminine energy and power that results when women are free and safe. Bliss Dance is intended to focus attention on this healing power‘. Bliss Dance is a glorious 40 foot tall internally lit metal woman…definitely worth the drive across the bridge!

banksy

Erie Alley in the Mission

Remember Clarion Alley? Well check out Erie Alley. In April of 2010 at the request of the people behind Public Works, Banksy painted ‘Bird Singing in a Tree’ on one face of the building, at that time a blank wall. In August of that same year the public was invited to watch 17 more artists paint the remainder of the wall at a public art event that included music, food and drink and benefited Root Division and the SF Parks Trust. Pretty cool when artists and the public all pull together like that.

photos courtesy metaphorm.org

Language of the Birds, corner of Broadway, Grant and Columbus

Brian Goggin and Dorka Keehn teamed up with City Lights Bookstore to give flight to 23 LED illuminated polycarbonate books that fly over the street corner in the first solar powered public art installation in the US (2008). The words of 90 authors are fallen to the sidewalk below to create new patterns and meanings, maybe something like the Language of the Birds.

Enjoy my second little tryst through San Francisco and have a great weekend!

Keep in touch,
Leslie

in search of privacy

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Maybe you need a little time to yourself. Or you’re afraid the NSA is stalking your digital self. Or that innocent seeming neighbor next door is actually monitoring your brainwaves. Now you can hide….or can you? According to Alan Annand, self proclaimed astrologist and writer, this lovely piece might be utilized during Mercury’s retrograde cycle. Now honestly, I don’t even know what that means, but there are days I’d definitely like to cocoon up in the most literal way. This looks like the outfit to buy. If you figure out where to get one let me know….Alan is still in search of a celibate Virgo to do his knitting. And a few hypo allergenic squirrels.

body sweaterIf your privacy concern is more digital-centric, then the Viennese architectural firm Coop-Himmelb(l)au may have your answer. Below is a photo of the Jammer Coat which makes you and your electronic devices un-findable in the google-o-sphere. Kinda of cute, right? Okay, maybe not, but if you’re that paranoid then cute probably isn’t your highest concern.

jammer coat

Now if it’s your brainwaves that you are concerned about and that pesky future mind-reading paraphernalia, then here is something developed to help you keep your thoughts to yourself. Hopefully we’ll be able to get it in multiple colors.

So there you go…privacy whenever you need it. Or you could just do what I do. Close the door.

Happy Wednesday!
Leslie

get gorgeous

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images courtesy asianart.org

I have a teenage daughter so I have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to define beauty appropriately for her. Or rather I’ve spent this time trying to un-define the message that the media sends. But still the story is muddy and I don’t really have a definition that works. I’ve used the platitudes: ‘beauty is only skin deep‘; ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder‘; ‘beauty is as beauty does‘. They leave me with a pithy feeling in my mouth and an empty heart. Beauty is different from one moment to the next, and gorgeous, beauty’s luscious and voluptuous cousin, is just as difficult to define. And often sits just shy of crossing a line into revulsion.

The Asian Art Museum is opening the show Gorgeous tonight with their Grit and Glamour party. The body of work, which runs today through September 14, spans thousands of years and many cultures and includes 72 works from the Asian Art Museum and the SF Museum of Modern Art. The show is curated in groupings based on themes rather than time or place and includes: seduction, dress up, pose, in bounds, danger, beyond imperfection, reiteration, fantasy, evocation and on reflection. According to the curator, “The power lies in its ability to confound boundaries of childhood, femininity, and sexuality.” Sounds like it will take us right to the edge of our comfort zones. I think I’ll take my daughter.

Have a great weekend,
Leslie

With a special nod to my truly gorgeous mother….happy birthday to you.

      

10 days till shortlist…

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The Restaurant & Bar Design Awards opened their call for entries on January 13, closed entries on April 25th, and the short list will be announced July1. There are 827 entries to pare down. The winners will be announced on my birthday in September! What a fun gift…

It’s been a while since I featured one of these beautiful projects….about time, don’t you think? I’m sticking with US entries for the moment. And while I love the super-decoration of Mister Important Designs, and the heavy masculinity of Zack/de Vito’s work (they’ve both got projects entered), today I’m looking to the US Northwest at one of many restaurants by Matt Dillon, chef and proprietor of Bar Sajor in Seattle’s Pioneer Square.  Built on a white palette, the space centers around Dillon’s only cooking apparatus, a wood fired oven. Ceilings are high and the many windows create a bright interior filled with whimsy (are those gold trimmed seashells on the wall above the oven?) and just enough swirls and soft edges to keep the place from feeling overly cold. Matt Dillon and his Bar Sajor have won acclaim already (GQ’s 25 best new restaurants, James Beard’s best chef). Let’s see what the judges in the UK think. This is definitely on the list for my next visit to Seattle!

All photos courtesy restaurantandbardesignawards.com/Bar Sajor

Keep in touch,
Leslie

ps….and bravo for not using any of those pesky Edison lamps!

The book is available….and they told us not until July!

 

water by design

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water glass

Here in California we know all about water shortages. We are in the midst of the worst drought so far in my lifetime and while some of us have let our lawns go brown, others are still washing their cars at the curb and letting all of that precious liquid wash down the sewers. Water companies are begging us to cut usage by 20% under threat of raised rates. Even still, every time I turn on a tap the water flows, and we have two working toilets in my house. Not so for millions of people around the world who lack access to clean water. And according to water.org, more people in the world own a cell phone than a toilet. Women worldwide spend more than 200 million hours per day collecting water. Organizations like water.org are helping communities to build wells and sanitation facilities. UTEC in Peru created a billboard that pulls water from the atmosphere for consumption by the local community.

There are also designers working at a more human scale to solve some of the world’s daily water issues with lower tech solutions. Architects Arturo Vittori and Andreas Vogler of the Italian firm Architecture and Vision developed “warkawater 2′, a water tower for use in Ethiopia where water resources are often hours from home and frequently contaminated. The 30′ tower made of bamboo and netted fabric harvests water droplets from the air, collecting daily more than 25 gallons of potable water in the basin at the base. The structure can be built using mostly local materials and local labor in a matter of about a week and requires no complicated engineering to build or maintain. Images courtesy architectureandvision.com

Vestergaard, a ‘humanitarian entrepreneurship business’ that makes money while doing good developed LifeStraw, a straw that purifies water as it is drawn. These straws purify a minimum of 1000 litres of water removing bacteria and micro-organisms that result from dirt, animal feces and poor sanitation. The devices are useful when water is available but unclean. At Water is Life, a non-profit that survives on donations, they developed a straw that functions differently but with the same results. It is worn around the neck and purifies about 800 litres of water after which it clogs and ceases to function.

Newer than the straw solutions, Water is Life teamed with Carnegie Mellon and the University of Virginia to produce a book that not only teaches users about water hygiene and safety, its pages also work as filters to provide clean water for up to 4 years. And the book costs only pennies to produce.

So as we in drought prone areas of the developed world work to minimize the vast water resources we consume, there are those who could use some of that water you let wash down the drain while you are brushing your teeth. Fortunately there are some brilliant design minds working on these problems. Bravo!

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

wallpaper gone mad

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Covering walls with paper a la granny’s flowered sitting room went out of style sometime in the 80s. Then somewhere around the turn of the century wallpaper started creeping back into design vernacular. And Jon Sherman had recently dipped his toe in the world of interior design, decided he liked it and apparently went a little insane and bought a truckload of old wallpaper manufacturing equipment, moved it cross country to New Orleans and decided to open a wallpaper factory with the unlikely name Flavor Paper. He says that because he didn’t know anything about the business he broke all the rules…and lucky for us. Flavor Paper creates designs that are surprisingly relevant…but you’ve got to look closely.

A few years after opening his factory in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, and surviving Katrina, Sherman moved the factory to Brooklyn to be nearer the majority of his clients. There he bought a 4 floor building on Pacific Street, turning the bottom two floors into factory and the top two floors into residential space. He’s got the penthouse and roof deck and rents the apartments below to employees. And I thought I had a great commute! The ground floor is factory with a glass front wall allowing passers-by to watch the papers being printed. Second floor is showroom. Not only is the product gorgeous, but check out the building! I’m going to….this summer. I’ve already set an appointment to see for myself how and where wallpaper art is made. Does this mean I can write off my whole trip? If that’s the case, then maybe I can afford to paper my bedroom when I return!

all photos courtesy flavorpaper.com

Happy Wednesday….keep in touch,
Leslie

ps….they’ve added pillows to their line of product. Pricey but maybe I’ll take an extra big suitcase just in case.

small is the new big

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small is big

Small living has been getting bigger and bigger the last few years. Between slim wallets and the growing interest…and let’s be honest, dire need…to build more sustainably, the mcmansions of the last century seem to be falling out of favor. Can we all say hallelujah? (Any excuse for a little Leonard). When designers and architects are faced with constraints, it allows opportunity for some pretty impressive creativity. Four of this year’s AIA award winners for small projects are featured in FineHomebuilding and include the Fall House, designed by Fougeron Architects, along my very favorite stretch of California coastline. The three bedroom vacation home sits on the land quietly, following the natural curves of the site, and is wrapped in glass to honor the beauty outside. And to add my own bit of love to the story, it is near enough to Esalen to run on over for a quick tub in their natural spring fed hot tubs (that is if you tire of that awesome built-in glass tub).

And for the rest of us, small is growing as well. There are ‘tiny house’ blogs and websites, and it seems that every couple of months there’s another news story about a family downsizing and simplifying. Karen Baumann and her two large dogs live in 460 square feet in Marin County, one of the country’s most expensive areas. She says that living small allows her to spend less time cleaning and organizing and affords her more time and money for the things she loves like entertaining and traveling. Micro-apartments are also becoming quite the rage, especially in the most expensive cities around the globe. Curbed has a column dedicated to micro-dwellings which seem to get smaller and smaller. The smallest they’ve listed so far in San Francisco is a mere 200 square feet (that rents for a whopping $1275 per month). And in Paris these micro-apartments get even smaller. Architect Julie Nabucet’s 129 square foot apartment includes an elevated kitchen above a bed/couch in a drawer, linens that tuck away and a tiny bathroom.

This is a bit too small for anyone with, say, clothes, but somewhere between the 129 square foot apartment and the 2600 square foot average home size, is the right house for most of us who are trying to simplify and live within the means of our limited ecosystem.

I’m off to the Contemporary Jewish Museum for their quarterly night out….have a great night and keep in touch,
Leslie
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unreal photography…very disrupted

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all photos courtesy Todd Baxter Photography facebook page

Speaking of disruptive, these are photographs. Really. Photographer Todd Baxter uses his digital camera and Photoshop to create images that tell stories that are at once compelling and distressing. His narrative style is much like that of the surrealists in Paris after the turn of the last century. Not only does Mr. Baxter come at photography from a new place, but his sister, Kim Baxter, comes at videography with an equally unique perspective. She has begun a series of videos that let us into the lives of artists as they do something mundane. In the case of her brother he is trying to fix a door (which by the way we never see completed). Both Baxters leave us wanting more….as it should be with art.

Pretty awesome stuff…enjoy it!
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

 

palettes: breaking bad in gifs

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More palettes from my cinematographically favorite show, Breaking Bad. That’s a Friday only word and I expect you to give me credit if you use it. These palettes are based on some hilarious GIFs from the good people at Funny or Die and they just make me remarkably happy. And while we are on the subject of Breaking Bad and happiness, did you hear that Walt may not be dead? Really? I’m giddy just thinking about it.

Color palettes created, as always, at colourlovers.

bb1bb-1palette

 

bb-3bb2-palette

bb-2bb-3paletteBe the danger….and have a great weekend!
Leslie


memorial day continued: vet made

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Veterans creating product for the rest of us. Pretty awesome and totally worth our support.

all photos courtesy ecovetfurniture.com and the ecovet facebook page

EcoVet employs heroes to create furniture from decommissioned Walmart trailers. Each trailer is disassembled and every part is re-used either in the furniture factory or elsewhere. Talk about your LEED points…there should be an extra point for using American made products built by ex-military labor. This is not charity, this is skilled labor providing useful products…you dream it, they build it.

 

all photos courtesy swordandplough.com

Sword & Plough: turning military surplus material into civilian products, sisters Emily (an active duty military intelligence officer) and Betsy use veteran labor to sew their products, thus supporting ex-military personnel and a cleaner planet.

 

all photos courtesy oscarmike.org

Oscar Mike: ‘We are a group of Veterans, athletes, artists and individuals from all walks of life who want to embody the spirit of hard work on which America was founded. We’re striving to bring back a tough, can-do spirit to our great country and we want to look bad-ass while doing it.’ Oscar Mike (‘on the move‘ in military jargon) creates clothing made in America and through their foundation funds athletic events for disabled veterans to help them heal.

That’s my last Memorial Day post for this year…..thanks for listening, now go spec some great furniture for that restaurant you’re working on,
Leslie