Jocks and Nerds

It was almost like being back in high school -- the "cool" people didn't want to be seen with the "un-cool," the jocks giving noogies to the nerds, and those band geeks like me stuck in-between with no social status at all. (By the way, this post has nothing to do with design ... please file under "Ramblings.") 

Photograph: Roy McMahon/Zefa/Corbis

I am, of course, not talking about high school; I am making reference to my recent little experiment with Klout. For those of you who don't know what Klout is, it is one of a growing number of "social media influence measuring services." In its own words, Klout is THE measure of influence. Really?! Let me tell you what bothers me about Klout and the other social media indicators out there: in a word, they are divisive. They tell the jocks who the nerds are and bid them to keep their digital-distance for fear of digital cooties. They stratify people according to their ability to influence the so-called influencers. They make those among us who enjoy social media for the right reasons (being social) doubt our worth once we and our friends are stuffed into neat and tidy high-school-esque boxes. Now, the service may not do it outright but the matrix by which they reduce you to a mere number is the world's largest schmooze-fest. 

When I started this little journey, my Klout score was actually decent, even though I had never heard of or pandered to my score. I looked into how they quantified my social media interactions and decided to play their game for a few weeks ... just for fun. Within a few days I took my very average score of 36 and power "klouted" it into a 71. That is up there with the big boys like Conan and social media celebrities. I then made the mistake of tweeting a friend my new score. They were devastated, not because my score was higher than theirs but because I seemingly reduced our social media relationship to a competition. I later found out this person had been un-followed by a group of muckety-mucks who didn't want to reduce their own scores by being associated. How incredibly juvenile. 

Though I was a band geek in school, my mother had taught me to respect people for who they are inside. My best friends were a jock, a speech club nerd, a student council president and a fellow band geek who was teased mercilessly because of his acne. They are all wonderful people with great hearts and minds; they are not numbers to be manipulated, reduced or artificially inflated. I have since gone back to my normal social media routine which consists mostly of being goofy and occasionally linking to this blog or something that is actually cool, and my Klout score is dropping faster than a high school prom dress.  One of my favorite people to follow (who has a Klout score of 15) has my attention; when he speaks, I listen. I see him as a person not a number. 

I have decided to start my own social media grading system -- I'll call it B-Dubs. If I think you are a human, I'll give you 100 B-Dubs. If I think you are an internet bot without a soul, I will give you zero B-Dubs. Enjoy the people in your path, open your ears to jock, nerd and every so-called status above, below and in-between. Life is meant to be shared and if you do this, yours will be richer.

Trends and Time Capsules

I've heard this statement in defense of something hideous or outdated, more than once in my time in the industry: "I have classic taste; I don't want to be trendy."

What we're really talking about is the difference between trendy and trending. Let me list a few things that are or have been trendy: pet rocks, parachute pants, the mullet, velvet Elvis paintings, orange-and-black shag carpet, and David Hasselhoff. None of these things should you design a room around.  And then there are trendings, such as popular color pallettes, furniture stylings and restylings, architectural elements -- these things are trending, they're in constant evolution. Do we still paint rooms green?  Yes. Is it Hunter Green? No. Colors are trending.

So when a client defends something unattractive or awful with the words, "I don't want to be trendy," in my mind I hear: A) "I have an emotional attachment," or B) "I am trendy -- that trend has long passed. I have bad taste and don't know it."

Let's begin with A. I totally understand emotional attachments. However, they should never be allowed to cripple or date a new design. When it's first suggested you remove your brass-and-black-laquer sofa table with matching framed Nagle print, your reaction may be, "But I love that piece!" Maybe the questions to ask yourself are, "Why do I love it?" "Would it work somewhere else?" "Would a picture of it in a memory album suffice?" "How does it speak in the current landscape of my design?" The same goes for color. The beauty of updating your kitchen cabinetry, appliances, flooring, window treatments, countertops, can be easily negated if you insist on reusing your favorite mauve pallette, which has long been retired by the rest of the world.

Now let's deal with the elephant in the room, B. It's been said "Beauty is in the eye of the beer-holder." Your collection of 3,000 hand-painted miniature garden gnomes might be the most beautiful thing you've ever seen but that doesn't mean you should design a room around them. It's also okay to admit you don't have good color sense or you don't keep up with current trendings.What I'm saying is, among other things, bad taste and time capsule decor can be overcome with the help of a professional. Even as a designer, admittedly there are things within that world where others have more of a gifting. My strengths are space planning, color, cabinetry and hard goods. When it comes to rugs, window treatments and furniture placement, I enlist the help of other designers and decorators. If you need help, get help.

As I mentioned in the previous blog (and I mention this time with a caveat that color trends are tricky), if it's on the market, in a magazine, and available anywhere but Goodwill, it's probably part of a current trending.

So here's a quiz to determine if something should stay or go:

1. Is it an heirloom piece, or is it nice enough to become an heirloom piece?
      A. If your answer is no, it should be gone.
      B. If your answer is yes, now ask yourself:
              1. Should it be put in storage until it becomes cool again?
              2. Should it be moved to another room and enjoyed? Or
              3. Does it honestly work within your new design aesthetic?

2. If you saw your room in a magazine but it wasn't your room, would you question the sanity of using this piece or color in the design?

3. Will my choices -- color and otherwise -- make people entering my home feel like they've stepped back in time?
     A. If your answer is yes, please seek professional help.
     B. If your answer is no, please seek professional help ... to confirm or deny your findings. Mauve, for some reason, is still available.

Death By Committee

What's the quickest way to kill a good idea? Appoint a committee to discuss it.

This post will concentrate on working with your designer or architect or decorator to achieve the very best outcome. And my basic point here is, design-by-committee does not work.

Actually I consider design-by-committee the equivalent of painting by numbers. Does it look like a horse? Of course. Would you hang it in a museum? I hope not.

To execute any vision for a space, and my specialty is kitchens and baths, the reason you hire a professional is you need someone who is the visionary and has the expertise to know what will and won't work. Imagine having your dental work done by committee; the orthodontist has the vision and expertise, yet you check with everyone from the hygienist to the maintenance staff and come back to the doctor with their plan. It's safe to say you would have an interesting-looking grill.

So the first thing you should do is work with the designer, architect or decorator that you trust, and that doesn't necessarily mean their taste has to be your taste. It means they work in a professional realm and they can bring to fruition your design by interpreting your aesthetic. Where the trouble begins is where you don't believe your own criterion of truth and that fear causes you to second-guess the design choices. Most of the time when I encounter a client who wants to design by committee, it has more to do with their fear of making a decision and having to defend it later. Thus begins the journey into Committee Land, where every design aspect is run past a neighbor, a daughter-in-law, a daughter, a great Aunt, a cousin twice removed, someone you met in the grocery store and the yard guy, all who once watched an episode of something on HGTV and therefore, somehow, have more credibility with you than your own design team.

I'm not saying you shouldn't seek counsel, but when seeking that counsel begins to fragment the original design, look and feel, the trust begins to unravel between you and your design professionals. The design becomes convoluted. And 90-percent of the time, people end up with a final product that is very, very similar to what they began with.

So here are my five tips to save yourself from design death-by-committee:

1. Trust the professional. Not only will they help you create something much greater but in most cases will save you money by not allowing you to make mistakes.

2. Don't be swayed by well-meaning people's advice or criticism. Should you seek wise counsel? Yes. Do you always have to follow it? No.

3. Don't be afraid of change. Some people avoid design changes and blame it on not wanting to be "trendy" when, in actuality, anything on the market right now is the trend.

4. Relax and trust yourself. Your kitchen wall color is not a life game-changer; it's a kitchen wall color.

5. Have fun sharing your new designs with the aforementioned people confidently. If they don't like it, it's okay.

BONUS LIFE LESSON:

6. Never trust a man who wears suspenders and a belt; don't trust a man who doesn't trust his pants.

Feeling a Little Blog

I have a little blog. If you are reading this, you have seen it. Not a lot here, a thought or story once a month or so -- ramblings, mostly. I have two friends that have completely opposite takes on blogging. One blogs every day. Every day. I am not sure I even think every day, much less gather those thoughts and write them down for the world to comment on. His blog is insightful, funny, snarky, smart. It is his goal to write everyday, part of his routine to wake, eat, brush teeth, jog ... and blog. He shares huge portions of his life with the public at large. On the flip side, my other friend thinks blogging would put too much of her life on display; even if the blog were about things other than her, she believes it would always come back to her interpretation, mind and heart, and expose too much. Funny, her Grandmother journaled and those journals were eventually made into a book - a blog in hardback?! I fit right in the middle. I blog when I want, and hope people read it and find a nugget to take away. I neither market it to the masses or keep it hidden ... it simply exists. I feel there is nothing wrong with any of these approaches.

I spent today at the World of Whirlpool as a guest of Jenn-Air appliances and Digitas, a digital branding agency. It was a bloggers' luncheon and a chance for the Whirlpool corporation to show off its new Chicago facility and get a buzz going in blog land. By the way, WOW, as they call it, is quite apropos. With the exception of me, they invited big-time bloggers, industry-leading bloggers, blog gods (small "g"), even. I expected a room full of smelly hipsters sipping chai; what it turned out to be was a room full of ladies: professionals, moms, singles, and everything in-between. Being the only guy there, I stayed at the back of the group and tried to blend in with the Whirlpool employees. I stuck out like a sore thumb. We looked at each brand in the Whirlpool family, snapped pictures with our smart phones, tweeted, re-tweeted, ate a fabulous lunch, learned about invisible stains, which seems a bit of an oxymoron but has apparently plagued mankind since creation, and asked lots of questions.

Now, here is my take on the event. I think it is grassroots marketing at its finest. Peer-to-peer is the best way to sell your brand -- in the old days we called it "word of mouth." One of the ladies in the group summed it up with a great comment concerning the purchase of an Induction Cooktop. "I need a friend to buy one first," she said. Advertising is great, but we all want someone we trust to tell us it's OK. I looked back over the Twitter feed from the event and saw the conversation that had already started ... induction, stain removal, home brew laundry concoctions. I would also venture a guess that at some point these bloggers will do what they do and blog. There was no hard sell, no "But wait, there's more" gimmick. What a great idea, to pull the curtain back at Oz and let people see what you have.

What's The Difference?

One of my Facebook friends had an interesting status the other day. It read, "What is the difference between art and decoration?" At first I just hit the "Like" button, considering it a nice ponder, but the question has been with me all week. What makes art "Art" and what makes other art simply "decoration"? It's the same question I ask myself about my favorite TV shows, "American Pickers" and "Hoarders" -- one man's trash is another man's treasure.

(Photo: Case Study #22 by Julius Shulman, Circa 1960 - Art in three styles: Architecture, Image, Photography Style. This image moves me.)

I think for me to answer the question honestly, I have to look at the effect each has on my heart and mind. I consider true art to be a very high calling. I don't necessarily have to like something to consider it art; actually the fact I don't like it may be the very thing that places it in the art category. Art always stirs emotion. There should be a visceral reaction to its form or color or subject -- or the lack thereof. Art has a tension to it. Consider Monet and Picasso, who painted things as they saw them, not as they actually were; there is the tension. Even masters of realism like Michelangelo and Titian created great tension in their work, drawing the viewer in, making us question why or how. Decoration, on the other hand, is neutral. It fills space and may be pleasant to the eye but it doesn't affect the heart.

Like most of you, I have many things in my home. Some items are there simply to keep the space from feeling empty and to add form and balance to a room: decorations. Then there are those pieces that capture my attention: art. These are the things I look at and ponder, their significance, my significance. They turn on that seldom-used part of my brain that searches for answers and craves beauty over clutter. I can look at them a million different times and feel a million different things. They are timeless and will not end up as garage sale fodder in the next few years as trends and tastes change.

How would you answer the question, "What is the difference between art and decoration?"

The Next Open Door

I waited until the last day of 2010 to write this post for a reason. This year I've done something that I've never done -- allow the year to wind itself down gracefully and slowly ... not a frantic push to the end. Really, the last day of the year is no different than any other day, a rising and setting of the sun as we fly through space. But we all enjoy new beginnings, we all love moving forward, we all look ahead to our next adventure.

It is easy now to look at 2010 as linear time and see how one moment led to the next, but as I lived it in real time I could see no further than the next door in front of me. A few events rise to the surface as I look back.

Early this year I was granted a seemingly out-of-the-blue opportunity to go to a Jenn-Air event in Atlanta: a little product explanation, a little hands-on cooking, a nice weekend in a nice city. It ended up being a great opportunity for me, both personally and professionally. What started small ended with an invitation for me to serve on Jenn-Air's Design Advisory Council with an incredible group of professionals from all over the country.

I took advantage of an unscheduled meeting with a stranger and was able to help her out; from this I gained not only a friend but insight into someone else's life and situation.

I was granted occasions to mentor people and in the process, encountered people with great knowledge and wisdom who, in return, mentored me.

I used my skills as a designer and project manager at an orphanage in Mexico and found new inspiration and an added sprinkling of excitement about what I do.

I spent most of the month of November moving my shop. It's amazing how much you can accumulate over five years and 7,000 square feet and to say that moving a shop that size was a monumental task is an understatement. Plus, it was a little dusty. The move allows me to work even closer with my cabinet maker, who is also a great and trusted friend.

In the beginning these things all seemed very random but with the advantage of time I see they have one thing in common: each little door led to a new adventure and tied my life to the lives of others.

Life is about the choices you make. Sometimes the most random opportunity is the one that takes you in a whole other direction and ends up being the clarifying act as you move forward professionally or personally. I borrowed the title of my final 2010 blog post from a video documentary featuring singer/songwriter and recording artist Lionel Cartwright. The video is not long - about 15 minutes. In these last few moments of 2010, turn off the noise around you, let the year end gracefully, watch the video and think about your own world creatively, personally, professionally. What is your next open door?

The Next Open Door from Aaron Williams on Vimeo.

The filmmaker, Aaron Williams is my son. Happy New Year!!!!

The Key to Salsa is Passion

I recently spent a very passionate four days in Chicago with 14 other people. I was at the inaugural meeting of the Jenn-Air Appliances Design Advisory Council, of which I am a member. This is an intense group of designers, architects and industry professionals that Jenn-Air has assembled to advise the company on a myriad of topics. Needless to say, when you get in a roomful of designers and architects, everyone's pretty sure that they're right. But I don't see this as ego; I see it as passion.

During the four-day event, we met with representatives of each of the departments at Jenn-Air--cooking, refrigeration, dishwashing, etc.--and were even allowed to see and give our feedback on prototype appliances that won't hit the market for a few years (insert confidentiality agreement here). The thing that stood out most about the Jenn-Air individuals who presented to us was their passion for their product. This wasn't a meeting to just get us to head-nod at their ideas; they wanted honest and real feedback from the group and honest and real feedback they got.

One night the group had dinner at a restaurant called "Moto." The restaurant was chosen because of its innovation, which had been an ongoing theme during our meetings. The restaurant and food are a science-based theme. Most of the food looked nothing like you thought it would taste, or tasted nothing like it looked. The chefs at Moto break their recipes down not just to the ingredient level but down to the molecular level, and then reassemble them in unique and innovative ways. Even beyond that, it was the wait staff that blew me away. Our waiters John Vegas, Chakra and Trevor, pictured below, were really REALLY passionate about their job. As a matter of fact I don't think they would call it a job. To them it was more of an adventure in food. These were young men, in their early 20s, and to have them be a) so knowledgeable, b) so passionate about their work and c) so fun, clever and creative was refreshing when, quite honestly, this age group is usually a little lost. I think the bug that had bitten them was passion--not just a job or a paycheck, but something they related to and could hold as their own. It was inspiring to see these young men so deeply immersed.

I want to do the things that I am passionate about; these are the things that we pour our hearts and souls into. And I'm lucky that it is my occupation, though it doesn't necessarily have to be -- your passion can be art, or music, or cooking, or wine, or helping people, or a million other things.

Have you encountered anyone lately who displayed passion or intensity, and did it inspire you?