There is always a Reality

Here is a concept: perception.
The process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting information.
We currently live in a time period where most our information comes from the media as a society our technology has allowed for information to be our fingertips. Is inevitable that as individuals we are drawn and seek entertainment from these sources. However, there is always a reality. I speak from first hand experience and as my example I will use HGTV.
HGTV is a cable-television network dedicated to broadcasting home and garden improvement shows, remodeling shows, among others.
As the viewer our attention is grabbed by promises of a new room for 100 dollars, a new house in just a weekend, or even better this is so fun and simple anybody can do it promises. One can asked themselves was is so wrong about these shows? And in my opinion is the perception of interior designers, the profession, and the details of what it takes to be an interior designer that they are feeding the public.
It can be denied that there are certain elements that are shown that can be found in the design process. However, those only cover a very small portion of the profession and distract the importance of the dedication of a good designer. A good designer seeks solutions conceived for humans considering function, physical, emotional, and spiritual well being for inhabitants. There is a certain degree of awareness, reasoning and skill, that can't be overlooked.
As far as my first hand experience, it comes from seeking an education in this profession learning the importance of a fitting solution and its successful execution for a design problem.

Event

On August 4, I had the opportunity to attend an event held at my school, The Art Institute of Tampa. The event was to honor and thank the senators and chairmen that fought for our profession in Tallahassee just a couple of months ago. In order to understand what fight and how important this fight is you must know that in Florida, in order to practice interior design one must be licensed.
Our state is one of the few with a strong regulation of the profession in order to get license one must have an education, experience and pass the NCIDQ (qualification exam). This process is not an easy or cheap and this why I’m appalled to think that there are people that believe that it is okay to take away the regulation of our profession. Not to mention the endangerment of the public if we have individuals that are not qualified working as interior designers. Ironically, this all tights in with my reoccurring point of how valuable interior design is as a profession and what is it that we really offer as designers.


A couple months ago, with the support of those fighting for us in the house as well as those local professionals, partners, and even some of my own classmates the deregulation has been reconsidered. Therefore, you must understand how important it was to share the room not only with those professionals that are as passionate about what they do as you are but also those who can understand and believe in your profession from an outside perspective. The energy at the event was that of accomplishment and pride. It was very inspiring and touching to hear the words of those that are fighting for what you love and believe in. Personally I gained a great sense of comfort knowing that this battle was being fought and there were those individuals willing to understand and stand up for what is unmistakably right.

Beginning to Understand

Where to begin? Its hard to think about not being able to have an answer for a question as simple as what do you do? You would think that if I'm dedicating my time and money to an education for a profession that I plan on doing for the rest of my life that would be all I could talk about. Sure, it many ways that is all I talk about, I spend a significant time in school and all we talk about its our projects, classes, challenges, and accomplishments. On the other hand, the rest of the time that I'm not in school all I can talk about is how much I have to do for school. However, the person on the other side of these conversations is either in class next to me or knows me well enough to tolerate all the nagging. The real issue is talking to the general public, the person at the grocery store, a customer at work, a new acquaintance, my doctor. These people that make up most of the public that have  no knowledge to what an interior designer does? or even worse the people that have been lead to believe all kinds of misconceptions about the profession.

I want them to understand and appreciate the value of this profession. I've been on that other side that assumes knowing what this as a career entails so I can understand the misconceptions. However, my time at the The Art Institute of Tampa has opened my eyes to depths and quality of what it takes to be an interior designer. Here I've been taught about space, form and function, about the process and all the work that goes into a project. Weird huh? the end result to the careless eye seems as simple as picking out paint, materials and buying furniture. Not being aware that there is a whole process that consist of the beginning stages of research, case studies, programmatic development, formal analysis, ideation, conceptual development, construction documents, detailing, material selections, rendering, perspective drawings, 3D modeling. All of theses are just some of the important steps of the process without considering all the different steps require to accomplish each of these.

The main point that I would want others to understand is that there reason, thought, psychology behind the decisions that are made when working with a space the aesthetics are as important but only because of the all the beginning stages that must be consider to make an interior successful. In other words, we should consider how important the functionality of a space, building, environment is in all aspects in order to begin to appreciate how important it is what an interior designer does.