More on Interior Design
Exciting news: I'm going to Gail's house on Saturday night, who has her own Interior Design company. She's going to show me around the industry and give me an idea of what she does. Very cool.Here's the trouble I'm having with the job search. I find that the jobs I see are usually heavy on one of the three pillars of my ideal job, but lack the other two. The three pillars of amanda'scareer, as I see them now, are:
1) Some aspect of social justice / doing good for the world;
2) Some aspect of intellectual challenge, particularly business / economics challenges; and
3) Some aspect of the arts-- I love being creative, and I get energy from designing things (like jewelry or blankets or rooms). I'm going to throw athletics in this category-- if I could find a job where I can move and / or work with fitness, that would be awesome.
My concern about Interior Design is that it may be too much #3 and not at all #1, with not too much #2. But I'll have more to say about this after the weekend.
Thanks for all of your comments-- they are so helpful! Keep 'em coming.
posted by amandascareer @ 10:31 PM
3 Comments:
Well, here’s a field I know a little bit about.
Architecture and interior design are closely related. Architects quite often end up being interior designers on projects and interior designers quite often find themselves in the architect’s role. It’s a profession that requires quite a bit of schooling and paying your dues. Without it you’ll probably end up the interior design equivalent of a cad /excel spreadsheet monkey.
Getting the interior design certificate from NYU isn't really going to get you anywhere professionally or give you a good education mostly because NYU doesn’t actually have a design school. Any kind of design is highly competitive in NYC and you'd be up against people who have design degrees. You should take a look at the programs at FIT, Parsons, NYIT and Pratt. All four are highly respected in the design world.
A good and worthwhile interior design program is not any less intense than an architecture program and the classes usually overlap. And you’ve seen first hand what architecture school can do to a person…
And interior design is not all about choosing pillows and fabrics. You’d be dealing with budgets and schedules and coordination, new technologies and materials, antiques, furniture designers, light and color theory, and of course crazy clients and consultants.
And no, you wouldn’t be doing any good for the world. It’s an art and art is selfish. Although, I prefer to think of it as a profession that forces rich people to part with large sums of their money and give it to the less fortunate.
I do think you would be good at it and enjoy it. It’s a fun, social and cooperative profession. There’s even running involved – i.e. running round the city looking at materials and furniture. And when you don’t have money of your own to spend, it’s fun to spend someone else’s.
If you’re still interested after speaking with Gail, I highly recommend that you sit in on a few studios at any of the four schools mentioned above. I can probably help set you up with something at Pratt and NYIT and maybe FIT.
I still think you should be an event planner for high-profile fundraisers. I have no idea if that would involve working directly for a big nonprofit organization (i.e. in the publicity department) or at an event-planning agency, but it seems like a job that would fulfill all three of your criteria.
What about PR for a museum or some other cultural foundation?
I'm with La and An (hi girls!). I think you'd be really good at both those jobs. Something that requires you to use your social abilities (because you know that's one of your greatest strengths), balance different people's wants, help them see things in a new way, and deal with aesthetics. Doing something good for the world and society as a whole is fulfilling, and so is providing someone with a service that makes them happier.
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