My Interior Design Blog

Here we are again with studio projects… The second project was Furniture placement. We were given a floor plan of a one bedroom apartment with certain requirements like, what we should have in the bedroom, and how many people should be able to seat comfortably in the main living room arrangement. I saw the light in the end of the tunnel. I mean, you know when you learn a bunch of things and they finally starting to make since. That’s what happen to me. After all the stuff we have learned we finally had a project that really is all about Interior Design.

The classes were fun, we had pinups and were commenting about each others work. It helped on several levels. First of all, we could hear other people opinion, things we may have not seen otherwise. Secondly, we practiced our oral skills which by now I realized were the most important tool for an Interior Designer. And the final thing is, that the instructor got to know you, your opinions better, and it also helped your grade .

The only things that some of my class mates had problem with, were scale, and clearances from the wall to the sofas for people to pass and things like that. After we decided on the winning floor plan we had to ink it on vellum or marker paper (I strongly suggest vellum, marker paper tends to bleed). and after everything is inked you need to shade it, but only the furniture, no floors, no counter tops, only furniture! And of course again presentation is very important.

Diving right to the third project, which was all about color and getting to know the D&D building. The purpose of this project is to be given a color and work it in to two different harmonies which we learned in class. One of the harmonies would be for the living room of project 2 and the other would be the bed room from the same project. I got Yellow-Orange, and thought to myself, hum, this is an easy color plus it’s pretty, it’s a win, win situation. NOT… I learned that there it no such thing an easy color. In addition we had to work in more colors… And it wasn’t only about the colors, it was also about pattern, “Do this pattern go well with that one?”

It took me many trips and a lot of samples to get the job done. And in the end of this project it was worth every second.

That project and the ones before were preparing us to the final fourth project. But, all combined plus added preasure. Stay tuned to find out more

Hey, today is exactly the one month B-Day for My Interior Design Blog. So, yey congratulations to you, me, it whatever.

In Studio our first chance to show what we learned about the Elements and Principles of Design was Project 1. First project was called “The Cube”. It started with us getting architect or in my case an architect firm. We were suppose to research them and decide what is their most noticeable elements and principles they use. Ones we did that we had to make to boards with picture that emphasize their style and write how come we think so. Ones again, the presentation itself was very important. You couldn’t just stick the pictures with whatever order you felt like at the moment, you had to think about it. The title block had to also somehow represent the architect.

The worst part about all this was that we had to actually present it in front of everybody. It’s not that I’m that shy, it’s just standing in front of everybody, and for someone who is English is not the first language it was even more terrifying, make mistakes, forget words etc.

After we researched and presented we had started the process of building the cube. Now, it’s not an actual cube, they just call it that way because of the dimensions of 8×8x8 inches. You should not only try to simulate the style of the architect you got, you should also use materials that are similar or imitating the real thing. Honestly, this project was a tough one for me, I didn’t really connect with my architect company, so it was hard for me to build anything. And of course again we had to present everything in front of the class plus make another board, this time a sketch board.

Overall, I didn’t really enjoyed this project, but like in the everyday life, you can’t always do things that you absolutly love and agree with.

Last time I talked about the binder of Elements and Principles of Design we had to do. I talked with you about the importance of the graphic presentation. Well now, it should be already easier since you should add the Human Factor part to the already made binder.

What is Human Factors?

• Anthropometrics
• Ergonomics
• Proxemics
• Territoriality
• Personalization
• ADA

Definition for all those terms you would be able to find in my Human Factors binder. (By the way, the order is a little bit crazy, but you should be able to see the page numbers, and know what picture belongs to what HF.)

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

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.