Interior Design

As a designer, effective self-branding is essential. We guide you through the complete design process, from inception to finalization, using Adobe software such as Illustrator and Photoshop for creating your personal designer logo. This process extends into Adobe InDesign, where you can seamlessly incorporate your logo into your portfolio and any design renderings, ensuring a cohesive and professional presentation of your work.

In addition to creating your own personal designer logo, we teach you how to create branding for your businesses/design projects. This reinforces software learning and the structured design process, beginning with extensive research and gathering inspiration from various sources. The design then transitions into conceptualization using Adobe Illustrator to create and refine visual abstractions, ensuring the logo is both appealing and aligned with the brand's identity. Once finalized, Adobe Photoshop is utilized to integrate the logo into product branding, creating realistic mockups that showcase the logo across various mediums and ensuring cohesive and professional branding.

As interior designers, mastering industry-leading software is crucial to our success. We provide comprehensive training in AutoCAD Architecture, enabling you to refine your skills in space planning, applying building codes, and creating detailed construction documents. This includes drafting comprehensive floor plans, exterior and interior elevations, furniture plans, and more for both residential and commercial projects.

Residential exterior elevation drafted using AutoCAD Architecture.

Commercial boutique hotel floor plan drafted using AutoCAD Architecture.

As designers, a key aspect of our job involves creating detailed architectural drawings to complete a full set of working interior design construction documents for architects, contractors, and other tradesmen. This ensures that our design ideas can be executed seamlessly by everyone involved. We use leading industry software like Revit to draft floor plans, exterior and interior elevations, furniture plans, and other relevant architectural detail drawings. This allows us to execute designs that are functional, code-compliant, and aesthetically pleasing.

First floor furniture plan for a commercial boutique hotel. Drafted using Revit.

Interior elevation detail drawing of a commercial kitchen design drafted using Revit.

Another industry standard software that we teach you is SketchUp. This software is a user-friendly 3D modeling software crucial for interior designers. It enables the creation of detailed 3D models, enhancing visualization and space planning. Its extensive library, integration with other software, and collaborative tools streamline the design process, improve client communication, and help identify issues early, reducing costly changes during construction.

An important aspect of being an interior designer is ensuring that our clients, and all involved in the project process, can envision the design before it becomes a reality. This is where digital renderings are essential. We offer instruction on creating realistic renderings using software such as Homestyler, SketchUp, Lumion, and Adobe Photoshop. A lot that you see in the design renderings were custom designed and modeled using the above mentioned software. The image shown is of an aging-in-place single-family home designed in the Japandi style.

Aging-in-place single family home digital renderings in the Metaverse design style. Created in Homestyler and Adobe Photoshop.

Boutique hotel digital renderings in the Mid-Century Modern design style with African influences. Created in Homestyler and Adobe Photoshop.

Boutique hotel digital renderings in the Mid-Century Modern design style with African influences. Created in Homestyler and Adobe Photoshop.

An important avenue of interior design is product design. We guide our students through the creation of various custom products, such as furniture, lighting, and custom pattern development, as pictured. By utilizing the Adobe Suite, especially Adobe Illustrator, students design, manufacture, and sell custom textiles and home décor through Spoonflower.com.

A significant part of an interior designer's career involves researching and sourcing materials and furnishings for design projects. The time invested in finding the right products is crucial for client satisfaction, as interior designers must source high-quality products that will endure in various situations. For instance, a home with pets will require different furniture quality than a seldom-used waiting area in an office. Additionally, sourcing sustainable products has become increasingly important, ensuring that materials are eco-friendly and responsibly produced. The image shows a furniture mood board featuring different furnishing options for a boutique hotel.