I wish I was taking a nap, but since I'm not...

Considering that this is how I feel today, I am going to link/and post an article Paul sent me this morning. Side note: I snapped this photo a few nights ago while laying on the couch. Paul and I were talking and had the TV on and our cat had apparently had enough of our excitement. She plopped down, stuck her face in the couch and took a nap. A face planted nap sounds wonderful doesn't it?

If you are not an interior designer, you probably will have no desire to continue reading this post. I'll be on my soap box for a moment.

Since I started college I have found that "interior design" bashing is quite fun for some people. There's the standard jokes about fluffing pillows and picking paint colors and people rarely realize what an actual, educated, licensed designer does. In fact, I've never "fluffed" or specified a pillow in my entire career. Yes we pick finishes and furniture and accessories, but we do much more than that.

We're given a building shell, and we make the interior what it is. We help determine, or sometimes just determine without help where walls are to be placed, how large rooms need to be, we have to follow the same codes and regulations that architects have to follow. We design ceilings, lighting, millwork, etc. We are more than capable to work on buildings. Most states require you to be registered after you've been educated and passed an examination, just like an architect, or a doctor or any other profession where the health, safety and welfare of people are at stake.

So, when Paul sent me this post this morning written by IIDA HQ about OSU Professor Drab's research stating that some of the problem comes from ourselves and the words we use and that our publications use to describe projects and our process, it made sense.

That Elephant is...umm...Big

Judging by the overwhelming response to the blog post “10 Reasons Interior Designers Matter,” I think it’s safe to say that there are a lot of misconceptions about interior design and its practitioners. And you’re a little sick of it. Ok, very sick of it.

Well, turns out the design community and their publications may not be doing justice to the profession, at least in the printed word. Research at Oklahoma State University over the last decade analyzed the language used by writers of design periodicals and interior design practitioners when describing the activities of interior designers (Drab, p. 543), and what they found may surprise you.

Researchers found that verbs such as “love” and “like” and adjectives such as “beautiful” and “simple” rank among the most used in design publications and by design practitioners. To me, this is like calling an elephant big. It doesn’t do the creature justice. Big is a relative term; that is, it doesn’t take on meaning until the audience interprets the word — and because every audience member’s world of experience is different, it means something different to each individual. To one person, big might mean the size of a house. To another, it might mean a pair of pants she wishes she didn’t have to buy.

Using an objective term to describe the elephant helps standardize the vision; for instance, “that elephant weighs 2 tons.” The same issue applies to defining interior design. “Love,” “like,” “beautiful” and “simple” are emotional words. The emotional context of these words contributes to the misunderstanding of the business discipline and the art of interior design. These words don’t provide the audience with a very complex view of the talents of the designer or the merits of the project.

Since most of you aren’t editors of design publications, your audience will most likely be a client, a friend or an acquaintance. When describing your projects, why not use words that describe how you followed a systematic process when designing the space? Take the time to explain how you researched design solutions to increase efficiency or safety in the workplace. Your work isn’t lazy or one-dimensional, so your words shouldn’t be either.

Lucky for you, NCIDQ provides a multi-faceted definition of interior design on their website. These words and descriptions do more for the elevation of the profession than an emotional outpouring could ever do. And in combination, they’re targeted. If we want the world to take seriously the profession of design, shouldn’t we use serious words?

It’s never a bad idea to double check ourselves before we exclaim over how “beautiful that room is” or “how we love the simplicity of that design.” This isn’t to say that the emotional component of design isn’t important, because it is. That’s the art of design. Just remember to include the business discipline as well. Because while the art of it may be fairly evident to the observer, the discipline may not be. Your job is to explain what about the project’s beauty or simplicity makes it the work of a professional. And then the public will begin to develop the vocabulary for design from both perspectives.