A series to get your creative juices flowing for your interior design firm’s blog.  Read the introduction here.

1. Choosing towel colors.  How to use a spa-like approach or to accent with your bath towels.
2. 5 favorite pedestal sinks.
   

   Photo: Better Homes & Gardens

3. How to tell good upholstery from bad.  Possibly show pictures that will educate your reader on what they can look for when selecting a piece of upholstery.
4. Effects of glazing cabinetry.  How different glazes change the natural colors of woods.
5. Choosing the right area rug.  Size, style, and more.  Do you put the sofa legs on it?

Photo: Apartment Therapy

Be sure to check back next Monday for five more blog post ideas!

Whenever I ask people what their main concern and block is for social media, a majority of them say producing content.  This is true.  All of a sudden, businesses that never had to write before are now tasked with being editors and journalists for their online diaries.  Blogging offers great opportunities to establish yourself as an expert, show your company’s personality, and be more searchable, but it can be overwhelming to think about coming up with a new idea 2-5 times per week.

In 30 minutes, I developed 35 ideas for blog posts for your interior design firm.  I realize I am leaving this to you to do the hard part—the writing!  Most of them are residentially-inclined, but I know that they will spur ideas for the commercial folks too.  You are more than welcome to use these blog post ideas verbatim.  However, you will also be thinking about your own spin so don’t let these limit your creativity.  Hopefully this list will help you think of even another 35 things that you want to write about.  If it does make you think of some posts, will you share them in the comments?  Remember that posts don’t have to be long, but they have to be interesting.  What is interesting to your reader?  They’ll tell you by what they retweet on Twitter, link to from their own blog, or comment on your blog.  It’s a learning experience and you’ll probably end up being surprised at what they most want to hear about.

I’ve divided this list into groups of 5.  It will give you enough to think about for the week and we will post them every Monday for the next 7 weeks.

1. Pantone color of the year and its uses.  Show ways that it can be used as a base color or as a subtle accent.

2.  Outdoor living rooms.  The change in fabric technology and options are amazing.  Highlight this or something similar for your reader.

Photo: Martha Stewart

3.  Window treatments and appropriate uses.  Educate your reader on the different window treatment designs and when each might be used.

4.  Ceiling fans– not from your first apartment.  Choosing a fan with style.

5.  Painting floors.  What to consider with color and sheen.

Photo: Design Sponge

Stay tuned for five more blog post ideas for interior designers, every Monday!

For those of you who have iPhones and frequently want to take pictures to post on your blog, Facebook page, Flickr, or other platforms, you may have previously been disappointed in the quality of the photos. In many cases, the contrast and color of the iPhone photos do not do the design justice. There are two iPhone apps—AutoStitch and Touch FX—that I recently started using that have significantly changed the quality of the photos that I can take with my phone.

AutoStitch:

AutoStitch allows you to take multiple overlapping photos that you can then “stitch” together for a panoramic view.  This is great for getting more of a room into the pictures.

One part of the image, before AutoStitch

And again, after AutoStitch

I am typically very stingy with spending money on apps, but I found the $2.99 for this app to be a well-spent business expense.  Now, when I take photos of any of our design projects in process or when I want to photograph the entire vignette at High Point Furniture Market, I am not limited.

Touch FX

For 99 cents, this photo editing app for your iPhone is also business money well spent.  I find most of my iPhone photos to lack contrast in color.  With Touch FX, you use your finger as a brush to touch up your photos.  You can also use your “brush” to make your photo sepia, black-and-white, posterized and more.  I particularly think that the “Contrast” tool is the most important for taking design photos and really punching up your colors and textures.  In the photo below, I used the contrast tool to doctor the left-hand side of the photo and the right hand side is untouched.  You can see the brightness and difference.

Left side– Touch FX contrast tool used; Right side– untouched

Todd Whiting, one of our GDM advisory board members, is the creator of Touch FX so that is how I found out about it.  I must say that I went kicking and screaming to actually spend money for an app (even an app made by someone I know- sorry Todd).  However, I can honestly say that these two apps, often combined, have made a huge difference in the caliber of photos that I can take and post with just my iPhone.

Happy picture taking!

While waiting for a pretty significant writer’s block to clear up, I thought a dip into my Twitter stream might help refresh me a bit. Even though it is against the general “how-to’s” of Twitter, I have focused my following to design, marketing and artistic tweeps— so that the noise doesn’t become too overwhelming. Well, lo and behold: when I really focused, some great new, inventive and interesting ideas and products revealed themselves. And, miraculously, the writer’s block vanished.

Below is a selection of some “twinspirational” Twitter finds.

@LadyFabrics (visit their website): Gorgeous, 100% natural, sustainable, biodegradable fabrics.

A wide array of colors from Lady Fabrics

@Alluminare (visit their website): Fully customizable fabric, wallcovering, pendants, lamps, pillows and so much more! Wonderfully interactive.

Fully customizable lampshades and more on Alluminare's website

@tracyhiner (visit the website) This is NOT your average wallpaper, it’s Art, and yes, with a capital A!

Two examples of Black Crow Studios' artful designs

@modernica (visit the website): Uber-cool furnishings that would make the Jetsons’ swoon.

Ultra modern chairs from modernica.

@HomeDecorNews (visit the website): A lot of something about a lot of everything for the design industry, from the DIY-ers to professionals.

@myperfectcolor (visit the website): Anything and everything you would ever want to know about Benjamin Moore paint.

The moral of the story: inspiration comes from many sources, Twitter being only one of many!

How can you make Twitter work for your business? Contact @gibsondm, @mandaleebee or @ProjectSupport (aka Alexandra, Amanda or Martha at Gibson Design Management).

A guest blog post by Gail Doby, ASID, Design Success University

Starting in 2007, the market for interior designers turned into quicksand.   The credit markets tightened, and projects that typically went to designers were brought in-house both residentially and commercially.

HGTV and the Internet created more competitors in the middle of the market from the consumers themselves, and frankly, for most designers, those weren’t and aren’t your best clients anyway.

High-end projects stayed fairly steady until the economic debacle of October 2008, and then many of the projects slowed, stopped or didn’t start at all.  Especially in markets tied to the financial markets like New York, the wealthiest clients lost their jobs and their sense of security if they were in jobs associated with money and wealth.

The commercial market was devastated by the credit crisis, and according to economists, the concerns aren’t behind us yet.

Even with this perfect storm, some designers were very busy.  Why?  They adapted to the market shifts, changed their pricing strategies, developed an online presence, spent as much as 10% on marketing, focused on a niche, learned how to differentiate themselves better, and didn’t wait for the phone to ring.  They took these conditions as a challenge and they worked even harder than before.

If commercial and hospitality is your preferred area of business, you’ll want to focus on renovations.  If you can show companies that an investment in renovation can lead to more dollars at the bottom line especially if they depend on consumer spending, then you have an opportunity to build a logical reason why a company should invest.  The commercial designers that become a marketing partner with their clients differentiate themselves and become a valuable solution-oriented team member instead of an expense.

If your specialty is residential design, bathroom and kitchen renovation is still steady.  The budgets might be smaller, but there is work in this specialty area.

A kitchen renovation featured on the Traditional Home blog

Some designers created packages of services they offered on their websites.  Why did that work for them?  The consumers wanted (and demanded) to know the investment required .

Other designers offered Value Based Fees because consumers resisted hourly fees.  ASID surveyed consumers a few years ago and approximately 70% said they wanted fixed fees.  Designers who offered this option found that it completely shifted their role from an hourly wage slave to a trusted advisor, and that helped many designers kick-start their businesses even during the last several months.

You could be the greatest designer, but if people don’t hear about you consistently, then your business will struggle.  These days, you need great photography, a great head shot, articles about you in magazines, online and in newspapers (third party endorsements), a web presence including a website, blog and social media and search engine optimization of your website and blog.

And, if you don’t have a written business plan, marketing plan, vision and strategy for your business, it’s time to get busy and take action.  Referrals and networking may have worked in the past, but they are less effective than ever, so that means it’s time to rethink and reposition your business.

[Originally written for Decorati Access Interior Design, Published June 11]

Success comes in many sizes and forms, sometimes when you least expect it; and those successes are particularly sweet.  Recently, I was explaining the benefits of project sourcing to a potential client, a very talented, well known and respected designer, how we could assist by pulling fabrics or supplying tear sheets within the parameters that she would specify for us, staying true to her design vision.  She didn’t feel she would ever use that service, as she wanted to make those design decisions, she loved that process, and didn’t want to let that go.

To my delighted surprise, I was given the opportunity to pull supporting fabrics for one of her projects!  She had a presentation in several days, and could not fit the 5 hour round trip to the design center into her schedule.  She supplied me with the vendor and pattern numbers for the driving fabrics, and a few details about durability needs and budget.  The design center is 15 minutes from my office, and within 90 minutes, I had pulled approximately 60 fabrics from numerous vendors and showrooms, stopped at the FedEx store, and sent them off to be delivered to her doorstep the next day.

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Motifs are a powerful touchstone, bridging the gap between history and design, past and present. While some have been relegated to the ages, many are seeing new iterations, blending into the design schemes of today. Let’s take a peek into the fascinating stories of their symbolism.

Quatrefoil – From the French, literally meaning four leaves or petals, such as a four-leaf clover. It’s popularity peaked during the Gothic Revival and Renaissance periods, and can be seen on countless churches and cathedrals to this day. It has also been an official part of the Bishop James Madison Society, established 1812 at the College of William and Mary, and the national symbol of the women’s fraternity Phi Mu, the 2nd oldest female fraternity and founded at Wesleyan College in 1852.

Fleur de lis – Originally used by French royalty as far back as the 12th century. It depicts three petals of the iris flower, literally “flowers of the lily”. It is a symbol of royalty and government for many countries; England, Scotland, Hungary, Italy and Bosnia, to name a few. The three petals have been associated with the Holy Trinity, and also represent faith, wisdom and chivalry. Like the quatrefoil, it is used by military and fraternal organizations, and surprisingly, it is incorporated into the badging for the Chevrolet Corvette! The fleur de lis is the main element in the logo of most Scouting organizations, representing the themes of the outdoors and wilderness.

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Now that the New Year is upon us, we find ourselves cleaning up the holiday leftovers and formulating resolutions.  This year instead of pledging to improve your life through diet, developing your tennis serve, or organizing your travel photo’s, I challenge all of you to look around and see what compels you.  Think about what inspires you, give yourself a list of goals and once you are able to narrow that list down, then you will have a positive constructive vision on which to live by.

So look around yourself and soak in the little things.  Find the inspiration that made you who you are today.  Chances are if you surround yourself with positive and creative sources you will be the best version of yourself.

Contrary to popular belief, an interior designer’s job does not consist primarily of design time.  This is not the sexy vision that young men and women dream about when they enter design school but it’s the reality that any seasoned designer can confirm.  Project management and project administration are the largest part of being an interior designer; all the brilliant design in the world cannot make up for a poorly run project and an unhappy client.  Effective management and administration will continue to be of paramount importance when running a successful firm but can there be a better mousetrap?

The question that I encourage you to ask yourself and your staff is where that important project management and administration borders on inefficiency.  If you’re like most design firms that we work with, that greatest inefficiency is in the purchasing process.  You may have great technology (like Studio IT) and great systems in place to make this process a little less painful but the reality is that pricing, creating proposals, creating purchase orders, tracking and expediting takes time, often a lot of time.  In fact, I can imagine that much of your purchase order management time can be summed up with a few of these frustrating points:

• Calling multiple showrooms and vendors to get pricing…leaving messages…then calling them again because they didn’t get back to you.
• Calling multiple showrooms and vendors to get pricing…leaving messages…and then missing their next calls because you’re on the phone with another vendor.  Thus begins the illustrious PO management game of phone tag.
• Checking on orders weekly (if you know what’s good for you) because you’ve had too many times where a vendor has failed to notify you that the sofa, which was supposed to ship last week, will actually be another four weeks.  The vendor does not have to deal with your irate client who wanted the sofa before Thanksgiving.
• Creating client proposals that accurately describe the items but don’t give the client too much information so that they don’t “shop” you.
• Dealing with a delay in orders when you’re on vacation, in High Point, on another project install, or generally completely incapable of handling the crises as you’re nowhere near your computer and your office, and might not even have a pen in your purse/pocket that seems to work.

In our design firm, we utilize great technology and we institute effective systems.  Despite our finest efforts, this has not, however, eliminated the items above from rearing their ugly heads.  The reality is that on each project, a design firm may deal with 30+ vendors and showrooms which mean 30+ lines of communication.  When I look at our bottom line, I see this part of our business as the greatest drain, the greatest hindrance to our growth, and our greatest cost.

When we launched Gibson Design Management, we focused on purchase order management.  While we now have multiple services that we offer for the interior design industry, I still believe that our purchase order management service is the best way to make a design firm more profitable and healthy.

Instead of having those 30+ lines of communication open at all times and being the central hub with a plethora of spokes, our purchase order management services give you one “go to” person that handles every order that you place, every item that you want to price, and every piece that you need to track.  At the same time, your company can actually make more money with fewer paper-pushing efforts.

As I write this post I worry that this might be the first time in the history of this blog that I’ve written a sales-y post that is also an educational post.  I would not risk our readers with shameless self-promotion if I did not truly believe that this service can have the greatest impact on a single interior design firm.

We offer a lot of great services and our team is really, really good at what they do.  However, when we sit and talk about our different services, purchase order management is the one service that the team unanimously says “that’s a no-brainer; every design firm should use that.”  Once I explain and write down the numbers on the time and money lost on managing purchasing in-house and then I show that the design firm can actually make more money, it’s not surprising that they say that.

In 2010, if you are interested in growing your bottom line and getting back to the real reason you became a designer, please contact me and we can talk more.  Don’t continue to do things the old way as we all now see that the old way is slowly taking a choke hold on the livelihood of our industry.

On January 1, 2007, the Boise State Broncos shocked the country by upsetting the powerhouse known as the Oklahoma Sooners in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl.  At the same time, the Broncos showed, in a David vs. Goliath battle, that hope, faith, and preparedness can be recipe for greatness.

I was lucky enough to be at this game.  I must admit that I lost faith; it seemed that the there were so many things that had to go “right” for Boise State to win the game after losing a 17 point lead and falling behind with only 1:30 left in regulation.  Sooners fans filed out of the stadium, bound to get an early break on the traffic, to only listen to the game going into double overtime on their car radios.

There is a great article from the New York Times about how this game even inspired the numbed sportswriters in the press box to believe that great things were possible.

This is not a football blog post though.  This is a New Year’s post about the importance of hope, faith, and positive thinking in each of our businesses.  We must be prepared.  Boise State would not have succeeded if they had not been completely prepared.  However, almost more importantly, when it seems that the odds are against you, there is never an excuse to give up hope.  Hope costs you nothing.  Great things happen every day; they’re not just on the SportsCenter highlights.

When setting your company goals this year, remember the nuts and bolts, but don’t ever forget the hope and faith that must accompany every day that you run your business and face adversity.  A little team from Idaho stunned the nation; everything did go “right” for them that day.  When you are faced with adversity in your business, don’t forget the Broncos.