Jeni’s Design Diary

Last night I attended an event at Seattle’s Design Within Reach, which was put on by Design Sponge. I’m still not sure what the event’s name was. DWR called it “Connecting Women in Design“, while D*S called it a “Biz Ladies Meetup“. I found out about it while doing a search for other design blogs.

I had never been to Design Sponge before, and that day I read only one post. I find it funny that I decided to go after reading, “…where women running their own design-based businesses (or who want to start one) can come meet, mingle and receive free business advice from local expert…”; knowing no more than that.

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During the past several days I’ve been doing a lot of reading about blogging. Since I’m new to this, I’m finding posts that are older but new to me. Today I discovered ProBlogger and the Rediscover Your Blogging Groove project, and decided to do it. Now, I’m not rediscovering anything; I’m discovering for the first time.

For this project you are supposed to write a different type of post each day. I hope that I find these “assignments” useful and educational. The homework posts are:

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One thing that really stuck with me form Rhonda Layton’s Learn to be an Interior Designer, was her advice for students to take acting classes. I whole-heartedly agree, and was lucky enough to take a few of those courses in college.

Theatre can (if you let it) teach you a lot of useful lessons; including ones that relate to interior design. They mostly fall in the realm of presentation.

As we all know, when you meet with a future employer, a client, or business contact your appearance is extremely important. But your appearance is made up by more than just your attire. Theatre can help you gain confidence, knowledge of the importance of costumes, vocal control, and ability to tell the story in a compelling way, among many other things. All of which help create a complete presentation of yourself and your abilities.

Probably the most beneficial lesson I learned was the ability to portray an attitude I was not currently part of my reality. It should be obvious that you would not want to portray poor attitudes in front of important people; they can tell your mood. That is, unless you are good at acting.

After about two years of being a housewife I got bored. I started spending a lot of time thinking about what, if any, jobs I would like to do. I had two main interests: photography & interior design. My knowledge of photography was basic, and the only things I knew about interior design came from television programs. By the way, that is NOT a good source of information!

Photography felt like the safe bet since I did have some experience/education, but I wanted to learn something new. Plus, the TV shows made is seem so fun! Being convinced that I would need formal education, I started looking at local school’s and their interior design programs.

I only visited two schools before I made my decision: The Art Institute of Seattle’s Residential Design program. It was nothing like I thought it would be.

Looking back, I wish I had done my research. Reading articles like those written by Rhonda Layton and Candice Mathers would have helped me be more prepared and informed. They probably would not have changed my decision, but at least I would have known what I was getting into before I committed myself.

I did (and still do at times) have those romantic ideas of waltzing into someone’s space and just magically adding color and lush fabrics; making everything gorgeous with hardly any effort. But now I realize how much effort that really does take! It doesn’t scare me off; instead I find that it draws me in. I’d love the chance to do this work!