Category: Interior Design News

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Interior Design News

Interior Design School Professor Tells Home Owners to Think Green

Graphic Design School Software As interior design schools focus more on sustainable designs and younger generations of students make their mark on history by being more aware of energy consumption as it related to aesthetic appeal, at least one company is stepping up to tell home owners that a remodel may be all they need to start being “green”.

Owner of Ryan Architecture and professor of interior design and construction at Anne Arundel Community College in Arnold, Maryland; Mike Ryan recently stood in front of an audience at Wilson College to discuss how each individual impacts the global environment.

According to Ryan, who talked to the audience about the American Society of Interior Design and the RE-GREEN program form the U.S. Green Building Council, Americans spend all but 10% of their time indoors. He also pointed out that, thanks to climate control methods inside our homes, architects and interior designers spend much less time thinking about the layout and design of our building. It is in a structures layout and interior design that energy consumption can be increased or decreased when given thoughtful consideration.

Interior design schools are already on board, but Ryan is attempting to get homeowners on the same page. Struggling with energy costs and unfinished interior design projects, such as an unfinished basement, can benefit a home owner financially and positively impact the environment by considering which products and how far the product has to be shipped to get to them when they think about home projects.

Interior design students can help by taking more time to learn about what is truly considered a “sustainable” interior design, to include products and the sources of those products. Arrangement, natural lighting, heat conduction, blocking out unwanted heat, and other energy consumption techniques can be implemented within the realm of interior design to help minimize the impact of a space on the environment.

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Interior Design News

Interior Design School Celebrates Twelve Years

An interior design school exhibited works of art created by present and former students earlier this month as a way to celebrate its anniversary while bringing awareness to environmental issues.

The Sanskrithi School of Interior Design was established in Kochi, India in 2000 and is one of just three official interior design schools in the state.

Earlier this month, the school exhibited twelve pieces of artwork fashioned by present and former students through a variety of mediums, designs, and forms. The showcase included paintings and caricatures, and items such as fabric presentations and painted pottery that the students hand crafted during their time at the school. Murals by students and instructors were on display during the exhibition, as well.

Through the use of different types of materials and art mediums, the interior design school was not only celebrating its twelfth anniversary, but attempting to bring more awareness to the global warming phenomenon happening around the globe.

Though the interior design school presented different forms and concepts of art in their brightly lit exhibition room to celebrate the establishment of their school, all of the art pieces were created with the earth in mind. The works were created using the colors and forms of nature, such as the sights around their home state in Kochi and clay pottery creations.

Interior design students that were responsible for the works were from various disciplines of the study including painting and architecture. Many of the former students at the school are now working in the region as professional interior designers. Several graduates allowed their water color paintings and pottery pieces to be shown at the exhibit.

The Sanskrithi School of Interior Design offers a diploma in civil engineering through a one year certificate program, with a focus on architecture and engineering and resides in the Kerala district.

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Interior Design School Demonstrates Details of Design Jobs

Interior design students are demonstrating the laborious process of interior design with a keen eye on sustainable design through a unique showcase at their school in Kalamazoo, MI.

Along the way, they have also shown the intensive course of study one must endure at an interior design school to reach the peak of professional potential in the industry.

The five seniors in the interior design school at Western Michigan University put together the intense representation of an interior designer’s job to draw attention to the fact that their job is more involved than the average person might think. The students used as many recycled materials as possible to create everything from miniature tin-foil chandeliers in their model designs to the rather large wires covered in shopping bags they suspended from the ceiling of a classroom in their interior design school.

While sustainability is a “trend” in many areas of art and design, it is something that more and more interior designers and students are focusing on because they understand better their own role in conservation efforts. Statistics among general populations also show that the younger members of society are more focused on conservation, resulting in a more focused effort from college-aged interior designers.

Along the walls of the student display are pictures of the processes they must follow to achieve a new interior design, pointing out that their job is not limited to simply decorating or dreaming up remodeling ideas for others to carry out later. Interior design schools teach myriad functions that all come together when a designer is investigating a problem and producing a pleasing redesign or concept for a new interior space.

Western Michigan University’s interior design program teaches the latest technologies and concepts for the interior design industry, to include training in modeling, concept drafts, and drafting to help future designers learn the process of problem solving.

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Interior Design School Wins Big with Contest Requirements

For design students at an interior design school in Vermillion, Alberta, a school requirement to enter at least three design competitions each year might be a golden ticket to becoming an industry leader without ever leaving college.

Two students of the interior design school at Lakeland College recently won industry recognition for an award-winning design they created during a fast-paced redesign competition sponsored by the National Kitchen and Bath Association.

Students Rebecca Johnston and Julie Arthurs won third and fourth place, to the surprise of some of the competitors. Their interior design school is small and one of more than 30 schools to enter the design competition. However, the two redesigned a kitchen concept for a contemporary couple as part of the timed challenge that won them their places on the board and accolades from the industry representatives that judged the event.

The contestants’ entries were sent off to New Jersey for judging to ensure that an unbiased round of criticism would be given to the students’ works. There were nearly 400 designs submitted by contestants from interior design schools around the region in both the United States and Canada.

Another student at the interior design school, Courtney Federspiel, won a third place award for a bathroom redesign she completed in a separate portion of the competition. In a report by Lloydminster Source (news publication) Federspiel said the bathroom design competition started their first day back at school in September. Unlike the timed kitchen event, the bathroom competition requires immense details from the students at the design school.

The interior design school produces award winning competitors for this competition each year. This is the ninth year running that a student of Lakeland College has won at the competition, a feat that only served to raise the standards for the next round of students according to a school publication.

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Are Interior Design Courses Important for other Professions?

Interior design courses can lead to a college degree for those who wish to be a professional designer, but they can be important for other professions, too.

Anyone earning a commissioned pay check based on real estate values and homes sales might consider taking a few interior design courses to help them make it through economic turbulence in the industry, but some industry experts say “Leave it to the experts.”

Interior designers are often called in to help real estate representatives sell homes that are out of date or completely out of touch with current home market trends. As home trends change, homes that go up for sale are much more likely to result in a SOLD sign in the front yard when they are aligned with the modern trends that home buyers are attracted to.

In a report by the Sydney, interior design educators caution against taking interior design classes lightly. They stick to their message that it is a difficult occupation and that skill level is apparent and visible in the work that agents perform.

”Regardless of education, design is an industry where visual evidence of your competence through your folio and your ability to talk intelligently about your design discipline may be all an employer requires,” said Geoff Fitzpatrick of the Design Institute of Australia.

Interior designers are expensive. Even more expensive is a real estate agent attempting to modernize the home without any official interior design training offered by some of the independent classes available to them. Not understanding the entire process of design can be costly. Time and money are wasted when an under-trained (or untrained) individual sets out to redesign a home for the sake of making the sale. Successful interior designers and real estate agents in the industry agree that this type of training is important in the home sales industry.

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Are Online Interior Design Classes Sufficient?

Online interior design classes are appropriate in certain fields of study, but may not provide enough direct feedback and instruction for all aspects of interior design degree programs.

However, there are many parts of interior design that fit very well into the realm of online training; blending online classes with in-classroom curriculum might be just what some students need to achieve their degree goals while maintaining a flexible schedule.

Nearly all levels of interior design –whether interior decorating or actual, physical redesign – relies heavily on computer aided drafting and design (CADD) software. Learning how to use this software is essential; a core ability for one to become a successful professional. Interior design classes offered online that train students on the use and function of these types of programs is essentially a “hands off” process. As long as the student is able to learn on his own pace and without direct supervision, learning software skills is an ideal candidate for online training.

Much of the foundational knowledge students are taught in their first year of interior design classes fall into a category that seems safe for online classes. The drafting and graphic design portions of interior design are done with software, as we mentioned, and learning the concepts to create these designs is standard in the industry so little teacher supervision is required.

Students may begin to exit the realm of acceptable online classes in interior design at the end of the second year of college, when project coordination and management become essential to obtaining a degree. While the skills can still be learned through online interior design classes, project management and team activities in the classroom provide a critical sense of reality that one might face in the professional world. One in which real clients change their minds and real people with emotions have to be an important part of the design process.

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Interior Design College Awards $2k for Penthouse Design

Interior design colleges face the same challenges as other art disciplines – the jump from school to real life where the desires of the customer and a strict budget can constrain even the most creative designers.

As one school showed however, getting students ready for these real life scenarios can lead to some pretty exciting (and fun) competitions where the sky is the limit and the budget is outrageous.

A contest designed by an instructor at a Chicago interior design college recently awarded students $2,000 for designing a penthouse suite. The interior designs weren’t for a real customer, but the students were given the chance to design the suite based on a lavish, $30 million budget.

Harrington College of Design instructor Constantine Vasilios challenged students to design the penthouse for the fictitious client according to the client’s own lifestyle and tastes. The imaginary penthouse had 14,000 square feet of floor space and the only limits were the budget and the imagination of the students who had to choose the lifestyle of their clients.

The interior design college student that won the first prize created more than 30 unique spaces, including an outdoor patio area, game room, arcade, and four bedrooms for the penthouse suite. There were three finalists in all that won the $2,000 prize.

While the multi-million dollar budget may seem like a vast amount of funding making it easy to create a limitless design, the project was really about how to make sure a design project comes in under budget. As far as penthouse apartments go, thirty million isn’t that much of a budget.

On the Harrington College of Design website, Vasilios said “Money is something we don’t always talk about in academia and the first component that students face upon graduation. Solving creatively within a budget is of paramount importance in real-world scenarios.”

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Few Surprised at Interior Design School Named Twice in DI Report

Once a year, top interior design firms and hiring companies are asked to name the architectural and interior design schools that they feel are best preparing students to enter the work force by industry publication Design Intelligence.

Florida State University’s interior design program ranked 10th on the Design Intelligence’s 13th annual report of America’s Best Architecture and Design Schools and earned one other distinct honor that is rare for an interior design school.

FSU is notorious in the education industry for many reasons, its interior design program aside. It is probably best known for being one of Florida’s flagship colleges; its two-thousand graduates each year, and its national ranking for programs stretching medicine, law, science, and the arts. It is also one of the ten percent of American schools to earn a chapter in the National Academic Honor Society.

In addition to Design Intelligence’s list of best design schools, they also named the year’s Most Admired Educators; a list of only 25 teachers in the country who have the distinguished honor of making this list. Only five of the 25 names on the list are interior design instructors and FSU’s Lisa Waxman made the cut. Many aren’t surprised by the dual honors to the interior design school, considering the extensive awards the students and faculties accumulate each year.

In a report from FSU’s Libby Fairhurst, Lisa Waxman said that being the best comes by being responsive and on-time with today’s interior design issues. ““We strive to develop designers who are responsive to human needs, who hold the world’s natural resources in high regard, and who design functional as well as beautiful spaces that improve the quality of life,” the interior design school instructor said.

Design Intelligence has rated graphic arts, architectural, and interior design schools among others for more than a decade and is an important publication for casting applicable comparisons between education systems and the needs of the design industry.

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Interior Design School Accreditation Agency Makes Changes

The Council for Interior Design Accreditation (CIDA), the organization responsible for accrediting some of the interior design schools in the country, recently announced a change in the way it talks about some of its policies.

This change is the result of discussion between interior design schools and other interested parties regarding the potential for erroneous assumptions by those investigating an interior design school’s accreditation because of some of CIDA’s documents.

The parties discussed with the agency the potentially negative perspective that some students and parents might have of certain schools because of the wording used in CIDA’s Confidentiality and Disclosure statements as well as its Program Announcement and Disclosure of Accredited Status document.

The primary concerns were three-parts of the documents that made statements about the interior design school accreditation process and the need for visit to the schools by CIDA representatives.  The organization agreed that some parents and students may not fully understand the terms used in the accreditation process and mistake terms to mean something less than positive about the schools.

The parties worried about the publishing of interior design school compliance standards, which could somehow create an unintentional ranking of the schools. CIDA’s press release did not provide detail into which texts were considered risky or how their reports could unintentionally rank the interior design schools involved. CIDA decided to publish more information to clarify this information rather than refrain from publishing it all together though they did concede to not mention any interior design school by name.

The documents also mentioned a required physical visit to certain interior design schools, which some concerned parties viewed as incriminating. The language implied that some schools were fully accredited, while others were not. CIDA says that the organization’s representatives decided to make changes after “careful consideration of stakeholders’ comments and concerns”, but ultimately voted to also disclose any interior design school that is denied for accreditation as well.

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Interior Design Schools and Green Designs

Interior design schools might be looking at more changes soon if they want to keep their students competitive in the job market.

The desire for sustainable interior designs from ever-more environmentally conscious consumers is creating a growing demand for designers that specialize in this type of design according to government job experts.

According to the United States’ Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Outlook report on interior designers, sustainable design is one the interior design specialties that are gaining momentum and will continue to do so. “Three areas of design that are becoming increasingly popular are ergonomic design, elder design, and environmental—or green—design,” according the BLS website.

The Bureau of Labor and Statistics defines sustainable interior design as those that involve “selecting furniture and carpets that are free of chemicals and hypoallergenic and selecting construction materials that are energy-efficient or are made from renewable resources.”

Interior designs schools will need to revamp existing curriculum to get students ahead of the curve in the trending market place, where officials expect that green designs will become increasingly popular. Sustainable interior design classes are offered at some interior design schools already. Those that are in-tune with the marketplace are teaching student designers about how to choose environmentally friendly materials.

Another aspect of the “green” movement in interior design addresses environmentally friendly methods, too. Interior design students need to know not only which materials are eco-friendly, but how to create designs that are aligned with the newest energy codes – such as lighting options, air conditioning, and waste management.

An example of a completely sustainable, environmentally interior design might include chemical free paints, wood extracted from reforestation companies, ventilation systems that take advantage of natural airflow, and production methods that emit less carbon into the atmosphere. Because the demand for sustainable design is growing, and to remain competitive with other schools, more interior design academies may soon need to offer specialized degrees in this discipline.