Only in South Florida

One of the contractor's sub-contractors arranged a meeting with the clients directly behind the designer's and contractor's backs and tried to pursuede the clients changing the designs. That was a fundamental business portoco screwed-up, and that just happened to me this week.

Students or competitors?

Some people suggested designers taking some interns and mentoring some interior design major students. Personally I think it is not to my business' interests at all. Why should I train my future competitors?! Those people who suggested people hiring interns are asking designers to commit career suicide. They have no idea nowadays where those students come from. A lot of them are from privileged families who have a lot of connections. Those so called "students" can simply open their own design firms without any interior design knowledge, education background, or related working experience by using their parents' money and taking advantage of their rich parents' social connections and generating unlimited client source. Those juniors can easily out-compete any designer out there who is like me who has many years of work experiences, holding an interior designer license, NCIDQ certified, LEED certified, interior design majored in college, and extremely creative. So, mentoring those "students" is like they already can kill me with bare hands and now I'm giving them pistols. It is April 1st, but I'm no fool.

Do they really care about your interior design businesses or just another way to make your money theirs?

During the economy downturn, I got many emails from those interior designers who asked me to take their classes, seminars, and webinars and learn how to get the clients, how to market yourself, how to advertise, how to run interior design business... Yeah right! I think those designers just got no clients, no jobs, so they found other ways to make money. I admire their quick thoughts in order to survive, but deeply feel piles of bull shits. When the economy was good, they would never share those business know-hows with anyone, now the market is in deep shit, and they all come out and start to teach people these things. Well, if there is no clients out there, no matter what kind of trick you learn, how fancy your facebook, twitters, or blogs look like, how search engine friendly your web site is, you will not get any client period! Moreover, if there were so many clients out there, those interior designers would not have so much time to give out seminars or classes, they would be so freaking busy working on their projects, and if their tricks were so good, how come they don't have any project to work on and have to spend all of their time on giving out seminars?! C'mon! If you are an interior designer, do what interior designers are supposed to do which is designing spaces, stop using this tough time exploitating other interior designers and wasting their time and money because in deep inside of your heart, you know whatever you teach them will not help them getting any clients because there is none!

Interior designer license or just a piece of paper?!

Many so called interior designers out there do not have any interior design related education or credential, they are not even talented or know how to draw, but because they have connections and are business savvy, they will be able to get clients and hire someone who knows how to design and draw to work on the projects. I would like to know how the interior designer license will be able to keep that kind of people from practicing interior design and protect the real interior designers?! I am not afraid of competing with other creative interior designers because my creativity is very competitive and I am confident I will survive in this business if I compete with other interior designers on creativity, drawing skill, and project management ability, but I can't compete with someone who was born to rich and have lots of connections because those people will take most of the potential clients on the market no matter what and people like me will end up working for those fake designers and making joke-like salaries. So, I really don't care about the governor is going to de-license the interior designers because interior designer's license really has not helped me a bit.

Who is the designer and who is the sales?!

When a car was built at the factory and sold by a dealership, what do you call the person who sold the car? the sales, duh! Well, so how come an employer who does not know any interior design who can hire a person doing all of the design work but the employer still can declair him/herself as the interior designer? Well, why can't we call the employer an interior design sales, or maybe we should start to call the car dealership's sales automobile designers?!

Design Trends or Sales?

I always received the newsletters from ASID which had many articles talking about kitchen design trends or green design trends...etc, for me, they are just bunches of companies trying to sell their products. Kitchen companies sell contemporary Minimalist kitchen cabinets detect Minimalist design trend is in. Furniture companies sell traditional style furniture say the traditional style trend is coming back and on the rise. The paint companies say the certain color trends will be popular the next coming season which the paint company happens to be the only one sells those colors they claimed to be in style. C'mon! Since when the design trends are detected by the businesses?! Aren't interior designers should be the ones detect the design trends?!

Tips of finding a right interior designer

There are many interior designers out there, but many of them do not have any formal interior design related education or necessary creativity. Here are some tips that will help you to find the best interior designer:

1. Check the credentials:

When interviewing interior designers, asking for a copy of NCIDQ certificate. NCIDQ stands for National Council for Interior Design Qualification. This organization gives out grusome exams twice each year to qualify interior designers. Interior designers must have 4-year BA or BS degree of interior design or 2-year associate degree related to interior design plus 2-year work experience as an interior designer in order to qualify to take this 3-part exam. Interior designers have to answer many multiple choice questions that test designers' professional experience and knowledge in interior design for the first 2 parts of exam and quickly finish up series of drawings to demonstrate the abilities to design an interior space in a very short time as the 3rd part of exam. Many interior designers I have seen working in the field for years could not even pass these 3 parts of exam all in once, many of them only could pass the first 2 parts of exam all in once but flunk the 3rd part of exam multiple times. For the designers who pass all 3 parts of exam, NCIDQ will issue a certificate with a 6-digit certificate number. Write down the 6-digit number and log onto www.ncidq.org to find out if the designer is NCIDQ certified.

If you want to design your house to be energy efficient, water concerving and eco friendly, you might want to hire a designer who is a LEED AP which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Accredited Professional. These LEED APs also need to pass a very difficult exam to be certified. You can easily find out if the designer is a LEED AP by logging onto www.usgbc.org and look for the designer in the LEED AP Directory.

At last, just like hiring a general contractor or a builder which you want to make sure he or she is state licensed. Nothing is different from hiring an interior designer. Make sure you ask for the copy of the license issued by the state government and write down the license number, and log onto the state's professional regulation department website to find out if the designer you are hiring is state licensed.

2. Ask for the designer's portfolios:

Looking at designers' portfolios not only helps you understand the designers' design styles and principles, but helps inspring you to find out what you really want for your future new home. However, most of designers will only show you those beautifully edited finished project photos done by professional photographer, but you should also ask for the design drawing set called construction documents which includes floor plan, furniture plan, lighting plan, reflected ceiling plan, electrical plan, finish plan, elevations, sections and details, and schedules, plus 3D perspectives. The reason to see these design drawings is to see if this designer is practicing "designs as it builds" design method. For maximizing the numbers of the projects he or she designs and minimizing the time spent on each project, many designers don't even design a space on paper in advance, instead, when the builder is building the house, the designer just goes to the construction site and looks at the space and starts to design on spot verbally. Projects done by this design method usually lack of sophisticated design details and creativity, and this kind of design method constantly caused un-necessary demolitions of the already built structures in order to allow the "later on" design ideas to apply. Also, mistakes can occur easily if any project is not designed or planned carefully on paper in advance, and usually the customers like you will be the ones to swallow these costly mistakes. If the designer can't show you a set of well drawn construction document with 3D perspectives, it is very likely this designer is practicing "designs as it builds", of course, he/she won't have any drawing to show you because everything was designed verbally at the construction site.

3. See free-hand sketches:

During design meetings, observes if the designer can express his or her design ideas through quick free-hand sketches. This is the best way to see if the designer can view space 3 dimensionally, without the ability to view space 3 dimensionally, the designer will not be able to visualize the scale and proportion correctly. Another benefit of seeing free hand sketches is to make sure the designer you are hiring is the designer who actually has the design talent, not those designers who simply are just good businessmen but knowing nothing about design. Of course, no one can stop you from hiring a "designer" who knows nothing about interior design but just business savvy. Those designers still can provide you the design service by hiring someone else who really knows the design to do the design work, but you should be very worried if those real designers resign while the project is under design or construction phase. It is like you always go to a very nice restaurant because you like the taste of the food, but one day you go there and realize the taste of the food changed, not as delicious as before, but the name of the restaurant is still the same, the owner is still the same, the waitress is still the same, well, but the original chef is gone...

4. Meet the design team:

Requesting to meet the entire design team members is very important, especially if you realize the designer you hired is not a real designer but just a businessman. Including those real designers in design meetings is very essential because you want your design needs to be expressed smoothly and efficiently directly to those real designers. Another benefit of knowing those real designers is maybe one day those real designers will be able to provide you the same or even better design service directly in the future in much lower cost because you just helped yourself cutting off the "middle man".