Company's Strengths

At an office meeting talking about marketing strategy and was told to list the strengths and uniqueness of the firm, and then we all came up with some of them that we thought other design firms do not have, and when I analyzed what everyone wrote in more depth, those strengths and uniqueness were all listed on my resume, but why all these good characteristics of mine did not translate to my salaries? Well, when I was told I could not have a salary raise due to the bad economy while the owner of the firm still could go on the luxury cruise vacations, purchase an expensive car, or remodel home, I wonder why.

Integrity in interior design

Many people mentioned about integrity in interior design field usually was about billing related issues such as designers bought very inexpensive things from foreign countries or whole salers but marked up 200% - 300% of the whole sale price and sell them to their clients. For me, that is stealing. However, there is another kind of stealing in this business which is tweaking other designers' designs to become their own. To me, it is just like piracy. In China, you can buy name brand stuff in very low price, and after you look into the trade marks, they are always missing one letter or spell one letter wrong, even if the manufacturer changed one letter of the trade marks, it is still considered piracy. Many interior designers including some of those famous ones do not want to spend too much time on design developing, they want to move from one project to the next quickly in order to make more money, they cut corners on design development. They read different magazines and "borrow" this idea and that idea and combine them together or make small changes on other people's designs and become their own, for me, that is also stealing. If the only thing they know is tweaking other people's designs, why not calling themselves interior tweakers?! Have some dignity and integrity!

Is 4-year interior design college education wasting time?

I spoke to an interior designer today who told me she was graduated from an university in Ohio and was majored in interior design. I was shocked since there are so many interior designers out there do not even have any interior design related education. I told her that she and I were the minority in this field. Despite of her success in this field, she thinks the 4-year college was totally wasting time because there are so many people in this field do not have the interior design related education and yet still make big bucks. She said she could have used the 4 college years to make even more money by starting early and be student loan-free. I totally agree with her. Don't give me wrong, I think the college education is important, but if I can turn the clock back, I would not choose interior design as my major. I would choose business administration as my major and golf as my minor so I can easily run an interior design business and meet wealthy clients on the golf course.

Interior Design Career Gridlocks

Interior design is a competitive business, design firm owners have plenty of tricks to prevent their employees from becoming their future competitors, besides asking you to sign non-competition agreement, here are some tricks usually employers used to block their employees' career path:


1. Dividing Tasks: You will only be asked to perform certain task(s). If you are a CAD drafter, then you will only do AutoCAD, you will never be asked to do purchasing, estimating, or supervising construction sites, or if you do purchasing, you will never get the chance to do AutoCAD or estimating, or you will only supervise construction sites without ever being asked to draw, purchase, or estimate. Even if you are asked to do CAD drafting, purchasing, job site supervision, you will never be asked to do contract signing, profit, over head, mark up calculations. By doing that, you will never be able to become a real professional interior designer because you do not know all aspects of design but few.

2. Selective Learning Opportunities: When you take CE courses, usually your employers will let you take those classes are solely about interior design, not those classes that will teach you how to run interior design business or how to do marketing.

3. Keep You In The Dark: You work your butt out on a project, but when the project is enrolled for a design competition or wins an award, your name will never be mentioned, or when the project is published on the magazines, your name will never be listed on the magazine. By keeping you in the dark, your talent will never be recognized, so for the potential clients out there, you will always be unknown to them.

Usually when the employer him/herself is a very talented and creative designer, he/she will be less likely to use these tricks on their employees, those who use these tricks are often the ones who do not have any talent or creativity but just business savvy. So, if you realize your employer is using these dirty tricks on you, please resign as soon as possible. Otherwise, you will never become a successful interior designer.