Aspiring Designers

I often receive questions from aspiring design students asking for advice. Many seem overwhelmed by school projects (which I remember all to well).

My advice is this, Take chances with your school projects. Now is the time to step outside of the expected box. It’s all in the PRESENTATION!

I remember my junior year project like it was yesterday. The assignment was to design a day care center. We spent months researching codes, saftey requirements, structural issues, programs etc. When presentation day rolled around many projects looked bland and expected. It was easy to fall into the hum drum of logisitcs, and therefore create an uninspired design.

A project should visually present itself as something unique, your interpretation of the information gathered. While it is our job to implement the important issues of design (a designer’s goal is to create safe, functional environments for the public) you should also excersice your creativity to make them unique to each client.

My college friends still laugh about my day care center presentation. I was adamant to break out of the mold and offer something different. Some said my presentation looked like a night club for toddlers. While my professors thought it was “a bit too out there”, it was this project that caught the eye of my first boss and landed me my first job. In a sea of sameness, you have to set yourself apart to be recognized. Find the energy to go the extra creative mile.

Here are a few examples of various presentations from last year

The homeowners wanted a casual elegant room. The presentation reflects that with a soft palette of greens and tans.

This is not my day care project from College, but it is a night club I designed called BarCode. The owner wanted an upscale sophisticated modern look. The presentation demonstrates that with moody lighting, black and white artwork and a sleek red sofa with metal martini tables in front

Homeowners often have a hard time seeing past the room’s current condition. With all of the pink carpet and white paint, the presentation was critical in showing the room’s potential. (see below)

Carol W. from NH asked

Is Western Interiors Magazine available on the East Coast? I am pretty sure Western Interiors is a national publication. It should be available at most news stands or larger book stores like Barnes and Noble. Below is the magazine’s website. You can also see pictures and read the article here (but I enjoy reading books and magazines when you can hold the book in your hand and smell the ink and paper - it reminds me of my elementary school library)

www.westernid.com

Happy New Year!

Thank you for all of the Christmas and New Years’ emails - I found some time to relax over the weekend and read all of them. It’s nice to hear from you and I am starting to recognize some of your names. It’s nice to know you keep checking back.

I am back in the studio for a day and will fly out tomorrow for my appearances in Salt Lake City.

Western Interiors hosted a holiday party at their headquarters and I found out that the February/March issue will feature my weekend place in Santa Monica. I wrote a while back about the photo shoot (you may have to check the archive folder to the right to read about it) In fact, I’m pretty excited that it made the cover as well! The issue should start showing up on newstands Jan 10th. Below is a picture from the Western Interiors Holiday party. L to R Adam Fortner Art Associate Editor, Laura Mauk Senior Editor, me, Amanda Dameron Associate Editor.

My shirt is a good example of why I should not wear pinstripes when on camera. It looks like it’s vibrating - makes me a bit dizzy just looking at it

2007

Although we still have 4 days left in 2006 - it’s time to start thinking about ‘07. I’m the type of person who is ready to move onto the next thing as soon as something is complete. Christmas is behind us and here comes the new year! 2007 will be an exciting time as I endeavor into new things. I have been enjoying some time off from my show so that I could build up my private design practice. With this came a lot of growth and loads of new opportunities.

This year you will see an improved website (my business manager calls it kennethbrowndesign.com version 2.0) With all fingers crossed my book series will wrap up and be on the shelves by the end of 07. In addition, I am working with a few large retailers to develop a few product lines.

To top it all off, I hope that my new place will be complete in April and ready for me to move in. Below is a picture of the Broadway Hollywood Building which is being converted into Lofts.

Living in a city where most developers’ motto is “tear down and build new”, I am excited to move into this building in old Hollywood and become a part of the trend that respects historical buildings For the past 4 years this building has undergone an extension restoration, down to the hand cleaning of each original brick!

Lots of new things in 07 - and I hope you’ll check back often to stay in touch!

For those of you in Salt Lake City - I’ll be speaking at the Home Show Friday Jan 5. If you can’t make it to the show - I’ll be doing interviews on the local Utah CBS Live News morning show, the NBC “Studio 5” Live show (11-12) and the ABC Talk Show that day as well. Hope you can check it out - or even better - stop by the Home Show @2pm or 7pm when I’ll be on stage talking design and answering your questions.

Oven Advice - keeping the Turkey free for Christmas Dinner

Many of you have written in asking how my oven was finally unlocked. With Christmas dinner 3 days away, this is a good time to revisit my Thanksgiving Turkey story. As some of you read down below, my oven malfunctioned on Thanksgiving and went into lock mode and trapped the Turkey for a week (until the GE repairman came out to open the door with a coat hanger).

Here is what apparently happened…..on commercial grade ovens like my GE monogram there is a safety mechanism that automatically locks the oven when it reaches a dangerous temperature. What happened in my case is the oven had been on all day (6 hours) warming up dishes, cooking dishes etc. When it came time to put the Turkey in to re-heat it, something had spilled near the thermastat and must have caught fire, raising the temp near the thermastat to dangerous levels and locking itself. This is the same thing that happens when you use the self-cleaning option.

The way to unlock the oven is to turn off the oven at the circuit breaker, wait 15 minutes for the oven to cool down and the oven should unlock itself after flipping the breaker back on. Somehow, my oven did not respond to this technique.

At the end of the day, I had to order a new door mechanism and supply a coat hanger to the serviceman (he was a very nice guy and felt really bad - I assured him it was not his fault) Maybe it was a sign to become a vegetarian.

I want to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas - thank you for all of your support this year. Look for new and exciting things coming to the website in the first quarter 07. I also have a goal to get my books out in 2007 too! With love - Kenneth

This year’s Christmas card shows Benson with his favorite ball and Oliver eating (his favorite thing to do)