Pandemic Planning From the Brain of a Designer

As I reflect on the past year, I am amazed at how readily our interior design industry was able to adapt, learn, and teach under the unconventional circumstances we were given.  I found myself thinking about the profession, and how one of the aspects that I’ve always found most attractive about interior design is the balance of thought processes.  Interior design requires logical, analytical thinking.  An understanding of how things work, how people think, and how spaces are used.  However, it also requires creativity and an ability to think about the function of space from a new and different perspective.  Interior design is a meeting of the minds- inside a single brain!

In the time I’ve spent working in this profession, I find that so many interior designers have brains much like mine.  Some are more creative; some are more logical – but almost all of us appreciate having a plan.  We like to focus on the details without losing sight of the big picture.  When interviewing a potential designer, I often ask, “What do you love most about interior design?” and usually I get a response about the process.  That feeling you get when you’ve started with nothing, to reaching the point of seeing the smiling faces and hearing the kind words of those end users whose lives are different simply because of a building or space you helped create.  And how do we get from point A to Z?  We are planners.

The COVID pandemic has created challenges for everyone, but it is especially challenging for those of us who make lists of lists, live by our calendars, and need underlying processes to keep the creativity flowing.  I ask, how can a planner plan during a pandemic? While details are still important, we ponder the bigger questions of, what are the potential outcomes, and what are the associated solutions?  We must look at the world from a new and different perspective, just as we do each project.

There is no easy answer.  These days my lists are shorter, and I plan for days rather than weeks or months.  Each project seems to require more options than ever before, for a variety of potential unknown outcomes, and the flexibility to adapt to whatever happens.  I have to believe that our “designer brains” can do amazing things, and that one day (hopefully, soon) the “new normal” everyone keeps talking about will be much better than anything we’ve experienced before.  In the meantime, keep adapting, keep learning, and keep teaching one another.  We’ve got this.

-Amanda Romine, Design Manager