Saturday 5 February 2011
When I grow up...
The drawings that others produced to represent my major all look relatively the same. Each one shows a room and an "interior designer" sitting standing in the room. All of them are thinking about or trying to decide which color/colors should go on the furniture or the walls. This was about the perspective that I would have expected. But it differs from the picture that I drew to represent an interior designer. When someone first saw my sketch they assumed that I wanted to be an architect and had no idea that interior designers play a role in the placing walls and dealing with the structural integrity and codes of a building. "Picking" colors is a common impression of interior design, but really it is about being given boundaries and finding "out of the box" creative solutions to fit within the given boundaries. Another common theme that appears is curtains. In the past 10 years the field of interior design has changed drastically. Interior decorators were responsible for picking colors and sewing curtains. I prefer windows without curtains, and making curtains is one of the last things that I want to do with the rest of my life.
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Haley, I love this post! Yes, the typical image that comes to mind when I think of an interior designer is paint and decorating, however, I know this is not the extent of the profession. I completely agree with your assessment of these drawings (one which was my own). At one point in time, I was interested in becoming an interior designer because the architectural aspects of the career were fascinating to me. I hope that one day others will be able to see the integration of architecture into the new-and-improved field of interior design.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know interior designers dealt with the structural integrity of buildings. Interesting! The only interior design media influence I get is what I see when my mom is watching HGTV...haha. I know what you mean when you say people have presumptions about the difficulty of the interior design field. I have some friends who are graphic design majors and they spend countless hours in the art building. It's takes a lot of time and commitment to be successful in your field, which is something a lot of people don't recognize.
ReplyDeleteI really think that this is so interesting. I had no idea that today interior designers were expected to help with things like structural integrity of walls and things of that nature. I thought those things were left to the architect and then the designer made everything "pretty." I'll admit to watching a lot of HGTV where there's show after show about interior designing, and I guess I've never really thought about the actual career behind the person. I don't think I thought about the training they would need, or the skills they would have learned, I always thought they were artistic and knew how to decorate a room in a tasteful manner. I do understand that it takes time and dedication to such a major and applaud you for doing so, I think that people should look beyond the pretty room's and toward what the designers had to learn to make them this way.
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