Sample boards

If not the most difficult post, this one is the most ambitious up to now, so bear with me.

I will try to simultaneously present:

• My recent experience with the task-based course Sample boards – taken at the KLC school of design – and that decided after I clearly identified sample boards as a week point, further to my successful graduation.
• My development with sample boards creation – I will reveal to you every sample board I have produced up to know (all 4 of them).
•   How to do it – or not to do it – dedicated to the mistakes I made and hope to stop making. The truth is: I still don’t know how to make a professional sample board, I just witnessed my own more common mistakes and misunderstandings. So, a part of this post will be my awaking to the possibilities that lie ahead
•  A glimpse into my two projects – after scratching the surface, and while completing a real design course, it is all in the name of making two nice rooms to live in.

So, what is a sample board? It exists to present to a client, even when it is one true self, the materials to be used in a project. Devouring interior design magazines as a regular practice, I foolishly believed that one could use images and play with them. Here is the first thing I learned from professionals – images of samples cannot replace samples.

There are so many reasons for it, I prefer to think of what is most relevant to me:

• All those fabrics and finishes have to respond nicely to our touch – we need therefore the real thing!
• Samples are presented in proportions equivalent to what we’ll be finding in the room – a little bit for small objects, and so much more for the significant presences
• The way a material reflects light is so important – when using photograph, it will be the reflection of the paper every time.

Nevertheless I was very happy to submit this first ever sample board, see here-under! It is still useful to bring together things you think go well with each other – it gives us a way ahead for thinking and more in-depth research!

As it will be revealed further in the blog – my present aim are two rooms – so this very initial, of the forbidden kind, photograph sample board, is still a part of the plan..

Also, on a very different course, I actually learnt that samples and materials come after a concept. This is another huge mind boggling approach I need to practice more. But, to put it simple – inspiration is sought in images which are then translated into colour schemes, textures and proportions of each. First encounter with this process happened on the said course. We were encouraged to collect images, and then put them together into a collage – one such experiment follows.

And here is the hitch – some parts of a room cannot be changed – my door finishes and floor are final! I cannot convert those into abstract images – combine with matching abstract images, until I get the mood, and then distil from the whole thing my future colour scheme! And being sure at that – that from the abstract image, it is a my doors, and floors, etc which will come to life!

I got my criticism on the first board, and that helped me build board number two – incidentally very similar to what I plan to use in the second room. Trying to be professional I started with an image, but you will only see it, when the whole room design is introduced. Suffice to say, that it is a nice moody piece of batik, blue and white, with very few shades of blue. The result in my opinion is somewhat graphic, and therefore flat.

Here the samples are real, and so are the mistakes, namely:

• ·  No border to the whole thing. And I would soon learn that the border is there to let people hold the board
• ·   Very poor quality of sample presentation – it would actually be one big thing to be reminded on my recent sample board course – designers are judged by their ability to look into detail and deliver perfection (I must open this bracket here – this is so much not me, and yet I still believe I could make a decent designer. Just something to start learning harder…

All in all an improvement to first attempt and a very serious reason to look for a professional course to mend those things. Just before that, I submitted my final work with BAID. I was happy that it covered a lot, almost everything that would be with the design; the mistakes were unfortunately persistent:

• ·  Too many objects and colours – a way too busy to be rational. I would later learn, that it is not a mistake to present a number of boards, as long as they share a height and a background material
• · There could also be furniture board – if I would insist on presenting every piece of furniture. Furniture, by the way, is stuck to foam boards – the reason being that when mounted on a sample board, this will give depth. I wouldn’t have thought about it – always looked to me as something, snobbish? Truth is that it works, so do not underestimate the foam board or any other trick of the trade.
• ·  Samples still not neat enough. May I say in my defence, that I tried?

And the final attempt is the result of a proper dedicated course, with KLC! Many are the things which were said, so here is what marked me most:

· 

•   There is a way to go for every different kind of material, when the intention is to showcase it properly. Light reflection, rigidity of sample, neat look, how representative a piece is for the entire pattern, how it will be transported, etc.
• ·  They seldom come out good the first time – it is important to find materials and time, and practice at home!
• ·  Tools are very specific; replacements simply do not give the same results. For example, a Stanley-knife is not the same as a scalpel, and there are a few others which matter!
• ·  The 3D thing – so many of the techniques just aim at providing depth and cheating the eye, redirect light where we don’t expect it, all in all turn a shopping list for finishes into a piece of art. Incidentally, my boyfriend calls the resulting sample board “your art piece”
• ·   And leading from the above – the order. A simple way to look at it is that we’d look at a sample board, the way we look at the room: so if the window is on the left, there we’d put the curtain sample, carpet at the lower end, and so on. This last one is not a must, in fact it seems that some rule breakers can boast very successful transformations without consideration of any of those.

The final sample board, the art piece is so to speak first exercise of the higher variety. Enjoy my art piece!

In conclusion, reading my weekly instalment does not replace doing a proper course. More attention is focused on my own mistakes and misconceptions, so basically, if you are doing it like me – at least some of the things which may go wrong were pointed out…

I am dying for feedback, and indeed, a most useful reaction would be to splash some advice on the hitch: how to inject the existing materials into a scheme?

Next post will probably be one which is seriously overdue: presentation of my white canvas – apartment which I bought in Brussels, where am typing this blog and wondering will I manage to put it all properly together?

You Never Really Learn Something Until You Teach It

Or, in other words if you want to become an expert at something, teach it to others. A very arrogant way to look at knowledge, I agree, but if the counterpart in question have enough critical view of your ability to teach, and if they are volunteers, why not?

In fact, this is a part of my personal story: when I graduated from the secondary school I had just marginally higher command of English, compared to my peers. It is when I became a teacher to adult classes, at the age of 19, that I got the drive to improve, make sure that I know the answers to, well, most questions, and grow confidence at the pace my command of English improved. And yes, I know, I still have a way to go, but the progress and the use I made of it, were enough to make me trust the method.

 As you may have guessed from the previous post – I do have a landmark in my way with the interior design – I have a certificate (photographs of the ceremony coming soon)!

And as stated, I believe learning only works when we take things further, so here is what I see as a plan to learn interior design …

Simplest way to learn up to now was to enrol in a class. There are so many of them out there. There are classes for beginners and mature students, for people who want to know all about design in depth and for those who just need the basics of decoration. There are classes with mandatory attendance and virtual classes ….and yet I chose to dismiss this method for two reasons:

• ·  I have my degree and experience in construction, just not the design department. I need an upgrade but I am conscious throughout the experience that my vision is already bigger than the Interior design picture, or shall I say 270 degrees aiming at 360? Is not a modest statement, but is very much how I see things (will try to keep this post as a bragging high, and go back to the practical later)… and
• ·  Structured learning is great, pushes you out of your comfort zone, makes you strive for deadlines, achievement and recognition, but without a project at hand, it can be oh so theoretical. And I need the variety of solid knowledge that I could apply any day out of a classroom.

Next method proofed is ploughing one’s way through books. With books, one can pick and mix the areas which matter, experiment and compare results to suggested benchmarks…However it is a solitary method. I am nevertheless happy to announce that I have found some precious paper companions, went true them, and plan to challenge, share or compare what lies in them, hopefully subject to other posts!

And finally, a thought I love – when you want to become expert on something – teach it to others. Teach, however is way too confident to put it this way. I don’t want to teach – I would love to share my learning curve with other interior design enthusiasts, and if they can learn from my mistakes, and I hope, from my victories too, then I will have put in my head some lasting knowledge.

My teaching method is simple: there is a goal and means to it. And the process is going to make the learning curve.

The project, my goal, is my own apartment – my white canvass where I have unlimited access and freedom to experiment. I also have immense responsibility regarding all the mistakes to be made, and I also know that I want to go gentle on myself. Is there a better educative framework I wander?

And how can I measure the success of the endevour? Well, there’s going to be beforeand afters of accomplished work, but also – look into the evolution of individual projects.

One such evolution “under microscope” is going to be my recently acquired knowledge about sample boards (in the next post). I was hoping to proceed in chronological order, but my sample board task based class only happened a week ago, I already had a few less than noble attempts at sample boards, and here I am rushing to summarise what I got from the experience, and hope it could serve as a notebook to someone out there!