My Interior Design Blog

Today was a little bit happy and a little bit more sad I got to see my grandparents today, and I’m thankful for that every day. But, my grandma’s condition just makes me sader and sader every time I see her. One time she could look and act completely normal but the next, she will ask me when are we going to decorate eggs? Well of course my answer was on passover, but the problem with this question was that we are Jews, and never in my life I painted on eggs with my grandma…

On a different note, Fridays were highly anticipated. First of all because it’s almost or even more accurate to say the beginning of the weekend. And also because we had studio again. I don’t know what about the others but every time I went in to class, and waited for our instructor I was very excited. I was looking forward to see what she will teach us next? What will be our next assignment? You could never know…

Our first mini project was to find pictures that would represent properly the Elements and Principles of Design. We didn’t have to use only interior spaces, we could choose whatever we felt was right. Than after we discussed some of the pictures in class we had to write the definition of each element and principle and why we think the picture shows it.

Now, all had to be neatly presented in a binder. Your graphic presentation is as important as the content from several reasons. First, it is 33.3% of the grade, and if you fail in it but the content is excellent you still will get a C. Secondly, The instructor gets the idea about you, I mean she understands what kind of person you are, it’s kind off like the first impression all over again. The third and last, it prepares you to next projects, the level of neatness that you need to have, proper organization, and in some level time management.

By the way if you don’t want to read my completed Elements and Principles of Design binder but only want to know them, here are the 6 Elements and 7 Elements of Design:

Elements of Design

• Line, Shape, Form
• Color
• Texture
• Pattern
• Ornament
• Light
• Scale

Principles of Design

• Balance - Symmetrical Balance, Asymmetrical Balance, Radial Balance.
• Rhythm/Repetition
• Emphasis/Focus
• Harmony/Unity
• Proportion
• View
• Vista
• Contrast/Variety

I know you may wonder how did I get to be in FIT if I don’t even know how many Elements and Principles I mentioned, but I’ll tell you exactly what I was thinking. I said that there are 6 elements but wrote 7, that’s because some may consider Pattern and Ornament as one element. Same in principles, I said that there are 7 principles but wrote 8, That’s because View and Vista is one principle as well.

I forgot to mention that I had ESL - English as Second Language after studio, but there isn’t really much to mention… It was boring, I felt like I don’t belong, but I couldn’t do anything had to take it. So, that’s about the only thing I’m going to say about this subject. If anyone has questions about it you are welcome to ask anytime

I’m in my home country Israel… I almost forgot how beautiful it is.. The people are so nice and welcoming, I wormely recommend you to take a week off and come to visit Although the circumstances I came for are not very cheerful. As you may remember I came here because of my beloved grandma. She is not doing very well and it’s very hard to realize that she is not the 75 year old grandma that I remember but almost 85. I would ask you all to pray for her, as I will do myself.

I’ll try to let go of my personal life and focus on our mission towards becoming the best Interior Designer we could possibly be. Now, we are moving to Wednesdays which were not much for me… I had only one simple subject that day. Geometry and the Art of Design. It was so easy, seriously, the level of studies was something like the ninth grade and if you didn’t do well on the midterm you would have to redo it, because the instructor didn’t let anyone get less than 80. instead of having a final test we had a final project. The project could have been whatever you wanted it to be as long as it has a geometric meaning. He gave us homework only ones which took about five minutes to do, and never kept us in class more than 45 minutes when the class suppose to take 3 hours. It was in the middle of the day which sucked but was worth the A you get

Thursdays were OK too. I started the day at noon which was good I had extra hours to sleep or study if I really needed to. The first subject of the day was computers, to tell you the truth I don’t even remember the official name of it since it was so not necessary. We didn’t learn anything new neither on PC or mac. After this class we had Presentation Techniques. Boy I loved this class, I always liked to draw but never really got professional training. The lady that was teaching us was such a nice person, very caring, she even bought us donuts ones because people were hungry. The only thing is, she was talking so much, we barely had time to practice in class because she was showing us things again and again and guess what? Yes, again. I really learned a lot from her though. She taught us about light, perspectives, elevations, and of course color techniques.

I would deffinatly tell more about Presentation, but now it’s already 2:35am at my end of the world, so I probably have to go to sleep. I have a long day tommorow, so see you later aligators

Hey guess,

I know I haven’t been here in a while but I have a really good reason. I’ve been told that my grandma is in the hospital, she broke her leg so hopefully it’s nothing serious. I bought a last minute ticket back home to Israel, and I had to do some packing and organizing. Don’t worry though, I took pictures of all the things I have done throughout the semester so I would be able keep writing there. I don’t know how often it would be but I’ll try as much as I can.

Last time I talked about my Mondays which were the worst days. Now, we are moving to Tuesdays which honaslty for me were the best it gets. The day was full and long but a lot of work never scared me. I used to start the day at 9:10. Drafting was the first subject. When I started the semester I was sure I’m going to be very good at it since I have it in my genes, I thought it would come naturally, boy I was wrong… Our first project was just to take the handout and trace it, sound easy, don’t you think? Well. No it wasn’t. Since it was our first project we had to practice all our new tools, rulers, comps, and most importantly the drafting board. I really left those homework for last and I didn’t know how long it would take. (Took a long time). The next project was to practice architectural lettering, again I thought that from what I have seen my dad do I will do it quick and good, wrong again… It took me about three hours to finish everything. I remembered the instructor saying something about using a ruler but it was taking such a long time that I decided to do it free hand. After all I’m young, sort off and artist, my hand is steady, than why wouldn’t I be able to do it? I got a C, my first C ever, or maybe it was C+ but still, awful… With time I learned that I need to dedicate much more time for drafting, and never do it last minute.

Right after drafting I had volleyball, I thought it would be an easy A, just to relax and keep me slim. turned out completely different… We ended up writing three articles and had a final project. Since I’m not going to talk much more or at all about volleyball I’ll write everything now. The articles were about fitness, volleyball and group or team games. It wasn’t that bad, but the thing that really annoyed me about the instructor is that I handed in the last of the articles about a month before our finals. What did she do? Returned all of them a week before the semester ends at the most stressful time and says like it’s nothing: “Oh, everything is wrong, you need to redo all three if you don’t want to loose 30 points off of your grade. And hand in the final project.” I really came close to hitting her, but I decided that my continuing in the institute is more important then satisfying my need. The final project was just something artistic so it took me like 5 minutes and the articles took me no time. Do you want to know how? very simple. I asked my boyfriend to write them since I have no time to spare. He was sure that he did a bad job, I really didn’t care, but I got an A

After an common hour I had the most fun, hard and satisfying class I ever had. STUDIO 1. It’s the class that you spend most of your hours both in school and out. You learn all the basics of design. I had the most amazing and tough teacher ever, luckily she is going to instruct studio 2. It was 4 hours that felt like one, and needed to be doubled. I’ll talk about this subject a lot more.

Stay tuned to read more about Drafting and Studio, but now I need to catch the subway to the airport. I sure don’t want to be late. Wish me a good and safe trip, (I’ll sure wish it to myself, I hate flying).

Chau.

Today we will officially start the new year. Hope that everybody had a great new years eave and a wonderful beginning of 2009. What better way to start the new year than move one from the admission process to the actual 1st semester.

When I got accepted to FIT I also got a brochure saying that there will be an orientation week. I truly recommend that you will go and participate even though you don’t know anyone because that’s the whole point of those activities. I personally had a blast, and got to know my first friends here in the US, this is particularly important if you are international student, I know how hard it is to be so far away from your family and childhood friends.

My first day at FIT I had only two subjects, 3D Design and Survey of Interior Design. I’m not going to talk a lot about those subjects because 3D was the most boring and useless subject ever. You can’t even imagine how boring it was. The instructor always talked and kept going to things that are not related, but even things that were related even a small bit were boring. We didn’t learn anything but cutting geometric shapes and gluing them together. I will though show you our final project. Because as bad as it was, it also was an easy A.

Survey of Interior Design on the other hand, was not as bad but come on guys it’s history, it can’t be too much interesting. I will say that our instructor was an easy one. What do I mean about that? Well he never gave home work, you didn’t have to take notes either. He was teaching everything from a power point slide show, and before we had our midterm and final tests (which were by the way the only ones) he just printed his slide show out with specific questions on them. So if you have good memory, and you can memorize three pages, you’ll be fine and will get an A.

After the first day of school, I wondered if this is the profession for me. I had high expectations and after 10 minutes of the first class I just doubted my decision. But, don’t worry, Monday was my least favorite day, everything got better the next day and on.