Perfect for someone with borderline OCD (like me)

I found this great product from Wolf Gordon called Wink (check out what Interior Design mag has to say about it here). It is a clear finish that you can put on top of any paintable surface to make it a dry erase surface! Wow! I'm thinking... all over the kitchen... office... etc. I love making lists, so I could make a list virtually anywhere!

My Dream Kitchen

Well, we are house shopping. I'm currently (and embarrassed to admit) living in my parents house... it's not a dream, that's for sure. So, as we are house shopping, my designer brain is running wild!!!

Today, we found a house that had a good head start on my dream kitchen. What is my dream kitchen you ask? See below.

How much do I love this kitchen? Let me count the ways. First off, I love the natural light! Wow, wouldn't that be a dream to cook and entertain in?! Second, I love the island. I want an island that is not more cabinets and countertops, but more of a furniture piece. I like how this one has open shelving. It just seems more familiar and comfortable to me, like being at the dining table. I also love the cabinetry. Classy and a little modern with a small hint of country. And I love the lighting... and...

PS - I think this kitchen is half the size of the houses we are looking at... what can I say? My parents taught me to dream BIG :)

Neotini 2011

Every year the St. Louis part of the IIDA Mid America Chapter hosts a Neotini event. They rent out a venue and vendors and manufacturers set up for a Neocon-esque day with their latest and greatest. Last Thursday was this years event, held at the beautiful Kemp Auto Museum in Chesterfield. There was such a great turnout (I think the cars drew people in) and all of the vendors had wonderful products to show. It really was a great event, especially since I won a $25 Visa gift card (thanks IIDA).

Some of my favorite products were:

LiquidMotion Floor Tiles from Hirshfield's

Halina Stripe window treatment fabric from Carnegie

SW_1 Lounge Seating from Coalesse

"Residence Hall Suites May Foster Greater Alcohol Use" from InformeDesign

I like to regularly visit the site InformeDesign and browse through articles that interest me. What I like about InformeDesign is they read the article for you, then sum it up so you can just get through the article down to the facts. It's like the Sparknotes version of lengthy research articles.

Today, the article that sparked my interest was "Residence Hall Suites May Foster Greater Alcohol Use". Being that I just graduated last summer from a university that has only suite-style dorms, and being that I was a Resident Advisor (RA) at said university for two years, this article hit home for me. As an RA, we had to deal with alcohol policy violations all the time. I remember I was the RA on Duty one Halloween night and we were up until 6am writing incident reports, mainly for alcohol violations.

The article was saying that it is too easy for students who have suite-style dorms to hide away and not be seen with alcohol. They have a bathroom, a sink, and a fridge. They could live in there for days if they wanted to.

I just thought it was an interesting article... click here if you want to check it out.

Let me fill you in...

Boy, it has been a loooong while since I have posted. Let me give you a whirlwind update of my professional life. I got a job selling furniture at a retail store. It was not what I was looking for, but it offered a paycheck (something I was temporally missing) and some skills about sales. While working that job, I went to an IIDA event and met some awesome people from the furniture and design industry. We exchanged business cards, etc. etc., and now I am working at Color Art Integrated Interiors as the Customer Experience Manager. I am doing some sales, some design, managing the resource library, and meeting and event planning. It is really fun, and very fast paced. I am learning so much, it is hard to believe that I actually went to school before this. Some advice to current Interior Design students: there is so much they don't teach you in school. Well, rather, they can't teach you in school. Like how to deal with snotty clients, or how to work within a budget. Those kinds of things are too hypothetical, it would just be hard to make a realistic lesson.

I am very grateful to have this position, and to work for this company. I have met so many people that have been my champions, and I know they will continue to help me grow.

Job Opportunities in this Tough Economy

I keep in touch with one of my friends from our Interior Design program who just recently graduated. She is having a really hard time finding jobs, which makes me very nervous for this upcoming May, when I will be job searching as well.

I am putting my portfolio together this semester and it really has made it "hit home". Graduation is just a few short months away and I don't know if I am ready! I am ready to get out of the dorms, but I am not sure how ready I am to be job hunting.

I also have become interested in working for Disney World (doing design work). Boy, their website is hard to figure out! I found the section that talks about the design work they do, but in order to see if there are job listings, you have to create an entire profile, and to be honest, I didn't understand all of the questions the job profile application was asking.

Hopefully my classes this semester will help me get ready for the real world. And if not, I always have my wonderful Professors to back me up!

IDEC Design Competition

It's the start of a new semester, and my last semester (as an undergrad)!!

Before the semester had a chance to get busy, I chose to do a design competition outside of class for the chance to win a little extra cash. The competition was sponsored by the Interior Designers Educators Council (IDEC) and was a group project that was time-sensitive. You only had 14 days from start to finish and the project had to be recieved to Regionals by February 1st. It was a busy two weeks...

I chose to do this project with two of my good friends (and classmates) Rachel and Ashley. The project was to design a learning commons (about 4000 s.f.) for a university. We were supposed to combine technology with sustainability.

This was a really great project for me to do for several reasons. 1) We have not done any projects concerning educational spaces, and won't do any before I graduate and put my portfolio together. 2) It was a learning experience! My team interviewed two of the Library Professionals that work at my University's library and I learned so much about our library! I can text message and Instant Message my library and they will answer questions for you! (How cool is that?!) 3) This project really helped me get familiar with systems furniture (particularly Herman Miller) which is perfect timing because one of my classes for this semester is Corporate & Institutional Design and we have to use systems furniture for our project.

We sent in our project last Friday. We don't find out if we go to Nationals until the end of February. It is going to be a long wait!

Semiotics (and other big, fancy, cool sounding words)

So, as an Interior Design major, our exercise on Friday was very difficult for me. In Interior Design, we try to represent things as accurately as possible without going overboard, spending hours and hours on one little detail. So, when we were doing the exercise in class, it was very hard for me to not draw an accurate picture of what I was trying to say... Then I put my picture up, and after looking at the other drawings, I felt ridiculous. I also felt like I had pretty much failed the assignment... but that's ok. I learned a lot from actually doing the drawing wrong. When Babcock was explaining what would have been better for me to focus on and what I could leave out, it really helped me understand exactly what it was that I was supposed to be doing. Today, I redid my drawing from Friday and completed the other drawings with much more ease.

So anyway, we are supposed to talk about our understanding of semiotics. Well, I feel like I pretty much understand, but not 100%. This is what I have so far:

Semiotics is like a sciencey-way of talking about communication and language and symbols. People understand things when they are easy to see and read and comprehend. Sort of like, it's easier to read someone's handwriting the neater the handwriting is. People also don't need "fluff" and "frill" to get the picture. If you want to draw a lamp, you don't have to add carved wood details and fringe around the edge of the lamp shade and all of those details for people to understand that it is a lamp. When you leave those details out, there is less for the person to look at, ergo, they can comprehend the picture quicker. People also can understand things easier when they can quickly recognize the images. Sometimes, when you are trying to convey something via picture, it is easier to use a graphic image that may not necessarily be exactly what you mean, but for the viewer, would be easier for them to understand. Example: if you want to draw a story about a person cutting down the rain forest, you don't necessarily have to draw trees that look exactly like the ones in the rain forest. It would probably be easier to draw the traditional tree with a trunk and a large bushy top.

So, other vocabulary we are supposed to understand...

An icon is a graphic image that very accurately represents the object. Lets use a pencil as an example. A photograph of a pencil would be an icon.
An index is a graphic image that has to do with the object, but isn't that object exactly. An eraser would be an index for a pencil. They are related, but not the same.
A symbol would be (as far as I understand...) is simply the written or spoken word for the object. Saying "pencil" would be a symbol for a pencil.
A metasymbol is a graphic image that is easily recognizable and a learned image/relationship. Kind of like clip art images. Clip art images (generally) do not represent the object perfectly, but enough that you can easily recognize the object.