Essential Resources for Design
By Jay Johnson
Mary Poppins used a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down; likewise, designers require their own bag of tricks to get their projects done faster, smarter, and better. Here's what we rely on at Irwin Weiner Interiors.
Our overall business goal is to keep our office size small, much like an old world doctor with a private practice. We micro-manage details in what is naturally a detail-oriented industry. We pride ourselves on personal attention and high-touch service. But some projects require that we hire freelance help, flexing up our staff size to temporarily meet the demands of a new project. Craigslist has helped IWI reach out to people whenever we need to hire, without the obligation to hold onto a full-timer. Post a concise ad in the morning, and you’ll be bombarded with great prospects that same afternoon and the following morning.
One key freelancer we like to hire is the site surveyor. They’ll photograph and measure a new job site, and save us a lot of time. If we want, they can take the next step and provide drawings – or we can do them ourselves. We also hire an architect to do the same work and offer more complex drawings, such as construction documents.
Our primary solid-gold, get-things-done asset on any project is our administrative assistant. Here’s our big tip: if your admin person has majored in English in college or business school, it’s a huge help. The sloppy attitude of many young employees (“Spellcheck will take care of everything, dude!”) isn’t conducive to a well-run design firm. Good grammar and spelling shows fastidiousness, thought, and care, . . . so go for the lit major. On a typical project, we have our assistant make phone calls, schedule, arrange and follow up on deliveries, return samples, do data entry and filing, research materials and products, organize the office, and maintain our resources library.
Avoid hiring any budding, wannabe interior designer for this key position. An admin’s tasks will be disappointing for the beginning designer (unless you need a junior designer); keep your employees doing what they’re trained to accomplish and they’ll be happier and more productive.
Tie your admin person to sales people in showrooms. We’ll often send our assistant to a showroom with directions such as “match up this color in a linen” or “pick out the solid color in this pattern in a velvet.” The showroom staff is only too willing to help our assistant find a variety of alternatives so we can make a smashing presentation to clients. It’s enjoyable for the assistant to be out of the office, and we don’t have to spend the money on a more expensive designer to do basic shopping work.
Are you still doing project management on paper? An interior design office management system is a must-have to keep projects rolling and accurately cataloged. We use a local NYC program called Idiom, but we’ve heard colleagues getting good results with enterprise programs like Design Manager and Studio IT. These software systems are designed to simplify and automate everything you do on a project, including specifying, proposing, ordering, following up, bookkeeping, and calculating sales tax. We’re constantly referring to our system to research past client orders and look up resources we’ll need for a new job.
Last, but not least, we’re addicted to the iPhone. It’s revolutionized the speed of returning phone calls, answering emails, texting, and taking quick photographs. We just got an iPad, and can’t wait to check out the many jobsite design apps to help us draw, measure, record, and transmit project data. Your clients are sophisticated technology users, and you should be, too!
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In November 2006, Manhattan-based blogger Jay Johnson and his partner Irwin Weiner ASID applied the popularity of watching videos on the Internet to the house-and-garden arena. The idea for Design2Share was born. On D2S, they share their insight, tips, and strong opinions about how people design and decorate their homes, entertaining over 300,000 visitors a year; their syndicated original videos had over 22 million video views in 2010.
Photo credit:
Photos © Irwin Weiner Interiors
