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Why is Design Style Important?

So let's, talk about what happens if I have absolutely no clue what my design style is? Well, you kind of have to start sifting through things that that maybe you have or that you love, and I try to help people, I understand that this process is one, that you shouldn't make any sort of negative judgment, she should just be open to assessing what you love and kind of turning a more critical but loving I two things, maybe you've already collected cause a lot of us have things that we love, what we start feeling insecure, oh, nobody that really knew what they were doing would do this, and a lot of times I teach courses or talk to people in what they walk away with is, you know what I found that most of the stuff I'm doing is right. You just validated that I was feeling insecure about a lot of things that I had in my home, and actually I don't have to go get rid of everything, maybe I just need to tweak and enhance them a little bit, so but one of the best ways is toe start with looking at...

what you currently own that you love, and then also starting to look at all sorts of design resource is like I was saying, other designers, work magazines, certainly websites and pinterest, which is one of my favorite things, eh? So we're going to talk. We're going to be using pinterest a lot this week and for those in the in the online audience who have a chance to coplin pinterest and follow my pinterest board, it's pinterest dot com slash toby fairly we have lots and lots of material that we're going to be covering and using as examples, and also I want to encourage many of you probably already have any of you have pinterest accounts right now or use it so every like ninety nine percent of our of our in studio audience is already using pinterest on and it's fun, isn't it? And it's a little bit addictive, and we find ourselves doing this at three in the morning when we should be sleeping. But it's a great way to really start understanding your design style. It's also a great way to stop some of those impulse buys because, as opposed to going out and buying a lot of things and then bringing them home, just popping them into some pinterest boards and spending some time with them and looking at them and making sure that they make sense with your style can be really great for the pocketbook because we're not making lots of design mistake, so we're going to be looking at tons of pinterest boards. Over the next few days, so certainly we want everybody to follow along on my pinterest page again that's pinterest dot com slash toby fairly so if we're starting to define our own style, how do we how do we start doing this? Don't be intimidated, be relax, it's fun to do that's one of the great things about pinterest is you can hop on there in the evening or, you know, a saturday morning when you're relax and you have some time to spend there and just start pinning things that you love and that's where I see, say, leave your judge hat at the door because it's not about going well, I'll kind of like this would do I really like it enough to put it on my pinterest board? And if I put it out there, anybody following me going to think that that it's hideous? And why would I ever pin that you we don't want you thinking about what other people would think or even judging yourself don't start self editing it's really almost like brainstorming, so we want you to just go out and start collecting things that resonate with you, and if you want to step right them into, you know different boards, that's great keep keep some organized, or you could just make one board that says things I love and throw them all in there and then after we teach you that over the next three days some tips for how to sort of organize those you'll start to see a lot of common threads in there but certainly we want we want you to not be judging before you even get started good here's a great tip one time I had a client to weigh have our clients go on pinterest and create boards and even secret board sometimes if they don't want everybody to know what they're planning but it's a great way for us to start knowing what what they love and what they're inspired by and it gives me some real insight years ago it was go to rip out everything from a magazine and bring us all these clippings but we don't have to do that anymore because we have tools like the internet and pinterest and all sorts of things so but one of the interesting lessons I wondered is I made a mistake one time and assumed that a client liked a certain color and some other things because they had tons of things pin that say we're all pale blue and after creating a presentation that was not a perfect fit for them which doesn't happen very often for may I pride myself on really getting into the research I realized that there were some missing bits of information from the pinterest boards and so they weren't saying in the caption love the floor don't like the wall color they were just pinning and so I was noticing all of these common things, but they didn't happen to be the common things that that person actually liked about the room said you may forget later on so as you're pinning, make a little catch in in your description of the pin about what you love about it love the lot natural lighting love the white wall color love the sofa style because that's going to then help you again come back later and kind of start refining what you love and it might help you make a great purchase if you realize you've pinned forty chesterfield sofas that air you know tufted and have little casters on the front, then you're going to have a pretty good indication that you, if you purchase one of those, you're going to be happy with it, right? So that's going to help you a lot? So think about doing that a little cheat sheet and don't fall but make the mistake of looking back at it later and going. I have no idea why I pin this because sometimes we're in different moods or atmosphere you know, different times in our lives different atmosphere when we're panning and it changes what were drawn to and then don't limit yourself just to images of interiors I have things like flowers, travel destinations make up fashion anything that you like, pin it because it's still really goes into defining your style and I think that's a great point first to bring out to before you move any further. Defining your style is not necessarily just your interior design style on dh even thinking about my style and I use a ton of color, I also where a lot of color and even when I don't wear color or wanna wear black or go out in public and have black on it's kind of frustrating to people that follow my style because they expect to me tohave on kelly green or bright purple or orange, they really my design style really is all encompassing of my personal style or almost even my personal brand, but the same thing is going to be true for you, too. You're probably going to notice that if you wear more casual clothing and love to be outdoors and you're a lot of times, your home is going to reflect that it's probably not going to be glamorous and very, very formal it's going to really reflect you, and you're going to be happiest if it s so we're going to take cues from all sorts of things over the next few days from your wardrobe. Lots of things, and those were great things to be pinning on pinterest for sure any any thoughts yet? Anybody have a question or a thought about pinterest or anything that you've had real success with so far with your pinterest board? Yes, sometimes I actually limit my pinning to what the only project that I'm going to work on so that that way I don't get confused because I have friends who pin everything they love, and they never get anything done. So if you are you doing designed for other people or you're working, I mean that, like, if you're working on, say, your living room, you're not going to be pinning said, is of bathrooms? No, because it hurts too much to be looking at the those and then not getting that work done. So I think that's a great idea we talked about that I talk about that I teach a lot of business of design courses, as j k o alluded to my business background, and we always say when people are looking at time management, if you're supposed to be picking out surface, why are you looking at refrigerators so that's, that same idea? And I agree that could be really helpful, so she's not saying that she's judging her pins necessarily she's, just trying to stay it's in one area when she gets to the bathrooms, potential pin bathroom pictures and maybe sometimes you have to have certain days that you just contain anything because sometimes it's about just letting whatever you see, move you right. And if you were only looking at probably the things your friends are thinking too well, if I don't pin this now, I might not find it again, eh? So there's probably a great happy medium, but I think that's that's a smart technique, actually, yes, I'm always pinning, pinning, pinning, and then I never take the time to go back and look to see what I've panned, and so I've sort of been making myself do that and it's really fun and interesting to see how my style or my interests have changed in time and and just remember, oh, I really like that. I sort of got I lost that vision or whatever and got into something different, I think that's a great idea, and I think that's one of the pinterest and all of these tools that we have now sort of become a blessing and a curse in many ways. And, you know, a lot of designers are leo, and we're thinking, oh my gosh, we have all these things no one's ever going to hire us again, but I'm here in lives kind of why we're needed a lot of times two is a designer as a guy if the client or the consumer is not doing this for themselves because you get all of this stuff out there and then you really it's over it's information overload its product overloaded style overload and how in the world these decipher and sift through all of that to make any sense so you're right it's better to spend some time so maybe once a month or once a quarter go through look at your boards, clean things that maybe move some things around andi you know get some perspective and like you I find things that I completely forgot that I fell in love with so yeah maybe even have a border to that's kind of like what's hot right now or what I love right now what I love in twenty thirteen because it could show you some cues about also how your styles evolving yes, I was going to say that since last semester had this great teacher before I met him I used to do everything on my eater like everything was you know, wifi blah, blah blah on dh then he was you need to get away from your computer and maybe you know, if you see this pictures print them out and then make a kalash so I feel like that can be like a really great way to defining your style because you can find, you know, like picasso painting and then a bathroom, which is like different things that can really connect. But once, when you put them in a collage, ivory in every course I teach sally's always wanted me to bring in, because this is she's like me, a designer's size like let's. Bring in fabrics. We need fabrics and things that touch and samples and were moved by those things and there's only so much inspiration in a two dimensional photograph to write. So I definitely encourage you to collect really things, print things out, pick up a fabric samples on. I mean, sometimes we've had people be inspired clients we work with are people that take my other courses, you know? We'll say, bring in something that inspires you. One time when it my friends came to one of my courses and she brought a chili pepper that she had grown on her back patio because it was the perfect shade of shar truths that you couldn't even create if it wasn't created in nature. And the funny thing was, was with after an hour of going through what people loved, all forty people in that classroom were coveting that chili pepper there like I want the chili pepper I want that to go in my box of inspiration, so it really does inspire you in a different way when you bring tactical things in our things, from nature and photographs that you took maybe another tool, and we'll talk about this to a tw some point this week, and we could talk about it now that I love to use his instagram because besides just pinterest, I'm constantly taking photographs everywhere I go and photographs of details, and if I have a lovely flower arrangement that I love the color, I might take a close up and all of those things that collect on instagram, so they're really sort of my personal scrapbook, and that could be also a great tool for collecting. You want to jump in? I feel like you are going to get you what you have to say to me that we have a lot of our time. Online chat is a big pin pinterest paypal and yasmin, who is from the u k it says, I love pinterest had boards reflect an emotion, so if you want a cool room or a character for room the pins will bring the style together, and she's always are using it for her clients. Yeah, we have made harrington who's being pinning so ferociously for three years that it's now out of control and she needs to curate have pins which way will do I do that every now? Because I'm a big penneteau just begun getting them into things and sues news definitely hopeful for organizing all the ideas you have a narrowing down what you want to do with the space, a lot of people hearing that concept of curating the pins, but having them there is inspiration and it is great it does take time to go back and look through them, but it's a go great technique and a great discipline to make yourself as you were saying, go back periodically and sort of clean them up a little bit and leave things out. And and maybe if you were just sometimes pinning, like we were saying from a very nonjudgmental place and just sort of almost like brainstorming like fast spinning, you might come back and find some things that you at first glance thought you loved that you just don't love anymore and just delete those get rid of them so that you don't confuse yourself, you don't have to say a one time I like that, but now I don't just remove it and that's the same thing as we're going to think about is going through your home and when you go home and start looking again you're gonna leave here and a lot of you're going to go home to go I need to get rid of everything which I hope that you don't do but there are going to be some things that you know you've always known it just didn't work you've tried every way in the world to make it work and it's just really not a fit here and maybe it's a fit for someone else that you know are another project that you have or you know if you happen to have a second home somewhere or you know vacation, spot or cabin maybe it can live there but sometimes it needs to sort of move on from from your own interior if you don't want everyone else thinking about what you're pinning, you can't make secret boards too don't forget I think you get three or four secret boards and you can share so if you were just pinning with someone else like with our clients will they'll citizen invitation or we will them to a secret board so we can see things but the whole world can see it if you're not ready tow put it out to the world yet that's an option so let's start thinking about what styles we really are and so I created for categories of styles for us for the purposes of this week and they're pretty broad categories because there's a million different styles we could all come up with different things that we've heard you know, cosmopolitan and urban and metropolitan and contemporary and traditional and you know, there's a billion different kinds of resting and that so I created for sort of overarching kind of themes or umbrellas and then we're going to get into over later today actually what sort of things fall under each of these? But I think this is the best way to help you not stay so rigid like not pinning yourself in a corner of a very very specific south but give you sort of a range of um things that you can choose from to start really creating a space that's truly year so um think about where we're going to go through in just a moment through these different styles and I'm not going to tell you the names of the styles yet but what I want you to do is take your note pad or your ipad or whatever using to write on and just start riding down um abc your d which of these styles really relate to you? I'm going to go through several images per style and you can just say make of calm for a b c and d and see how many of the photographs in each one really resonate with you and then we're going to be able to add those up and see where you fall now what? What really you're going to learn in the next few days is that you're probably a combination of several of these s so you might be sixty percent one of forty percent twenty percent one and, you know, ten, another and ten of the four style, and it creates that unique personal style free, but you're going to get some real information as we go through these of what you relate to, so tell him to do this as well, that get in the chat rooms, give us your feedback on one, because who? The quiz that different traffic to hear your comments as well, and we're going to use these times overall, three days of our course, so they're kind of want to know, you know that in italy, fine for them to say I'm a lot of people on which we're going to tell you what blah de blah is in a moment on the chat room and instantly give us a minute side right about oh, I have a picture of what sorts of things she likes.