Fri. 5/28 - Week2

I only worked half a day today because Í am flying home for my sister’s high school graduation. I did a few more furniture plans of different rooms in the Reisman residence. I also showed Edgar and few other people my big revit project of the bakery from last semester. He really liked it and gave me some feed-back on it which was good. He also showed me his portfolio mainly from college. His work was really good and they mainly used 3D Studio Max, which I don’t know anything about but would be willing to learn.

Thurs. 5/29 - Week2

Today I went with Glen, the president of the firm and two other designers to color selection. The clients were the Sobeski’s who live in New Jersey and are building a home in an up-scale neighborhood called Belle Lago. Toll Brothers, American Home Design Builders is the company for this particular neighborhood in Belle Lago. So we went to one of their show rooms where they have models of different rooms. A color selection isn’t just color selection at all. Rather it’s sitting with the client and helping them pick out every single architectural fixture and detail of the house. This ranged from the tile design in the master bath to the style and placement of knobs on the kitchen cabinets. It was very long and a bit tedious. But I learned a lot. Toll Brothers represent a selection of manufacturers so they were already predetermined we just had to pick from those manufacturers which made it easier in a way. The house the clients chose came with a standard of options, but they upgrade a level with a price elevation. It was neat to learned what cost more and how much and how that system worked. I took lots of notes and gained a real client experience.

Wed. 5/26 - Week2

I began working in auto cad today with our architectural planner Edgar. He gave me the floor plan to the Reisman project I’ve been helping out with and I drew in simple furniture, coping the furniture plan that had already been designed for it. Because of the computer I was working on it was the 2008 version of auto cad. I’ve never worked in the 2008 version before and it was a bit different but not too bad. I haven’t worked in autocad since the very beginning of this past semester so before I started I began by watching Edgar draw detailed elevations from plans and he was very fast at it. It was neat to watch him. Í also learned some new commands and shortcuts. I also had to familiarize myself with their colors of line weights and how they used them.

Tues. 5/25 - Week2

I scanned in fabrics samples and looked up furniture of the family room for Reisman to get ready for the catalog. The rest of my time for the day was used to find prices of EVERYTHING used in the Reisman project. This included fabrics, rugs, furniture, wall coverings and other such things. We used the vendor’s websites but most don’t have online pricing so we resorted to the vendor catalog pricing books, or calling them. Even though this is a very time consuming task I learned how to find price, and that we use the wholesale price not the retail price.

I also learned something else very important about pricing, that we as students don’t have access to most pricings. DGW (Design Group West) has total access because they have a huge resource library with pricing catalogs, and an account to every vendor that they use. Without an account with a company you usually can’t get prices, because they won’t give them to you or because you can’t access them. This is a problem because when it come to having budgets on projects in school how are we supposed to act like it’s reality when we can’t properly price things? Therefore we don’t actually learn the reality of things like pricing and budgeting in the classroom simply because we don’t learn how to because we don’t have access to it.

With the firm’s computer system, Design Manager Pro, it has every vender and all their information and our account information with that vendor. I am lucky to get to learn how to use this program and to have access to these kind of things so I know how to use them in the real world. I think it would be very useful and practical if our ID program had Design Manager or a system like it. That way we would learn how to use it and prepare us for a real job with a firm, but only if Ball State would be able to have accounts or mock accounts with vendors, that way we would also have access to all their products and prices. It would also give us practice with purchase orders and such things.

Mon. 5/24 - Week2

Today I spent some time in Design Manager updating received items to the warehouse for different projects, I am becoming more familiar and more comfortable with the program. I then scanned in samples and looked up furniture of the master bedroom for the Reisman project to get ready for the catalog. I also got to help pick out furniture and fabrics for the great room of the same project.

The new site I went to last Monday, the project is called Sobieski (the client’s last name) came in today and met with the designers for their home, they got the project confirmed and I will be going to the site with the team of designers on Thursday.

Fri. 5/21 - Week1

Today I learned about preparing a catalog for a project. The catalog is a huge binder that has every single finish of every room and the plans, sketches, CAD drawings and purchase orders of the project. My job was to scan in samples, crop them in photoshop, and then find the furniture and lighting fixtures on the manufacturers website and save it to the project folder. I spent majority of the day on this. I'm working on the catalog for the Reisman project and did five rooms of the house.

Thurs. 5/20 - Week1

Today we finished cleaning and threw away a lot more things. Today one of the designers talked to me about the budgeting of a project, and how the percentages of fabrics or furniture get marked up to make a profit and how to go about marking a product up and then about the percent of commission she can make. This is really introducing me to the business side of interior design and I’ve realized a lot of what I have been doing is business. This is good because in classes we don’t learn much about the business side of design, sure we are taught terms and in future projects I know we’ll have budgets but dealing with it in the classroom and in the real world with real money and a real client is totally different. I’m glad I’m being introduced to this and learning about it.

Wed. 5/19 - Week1

Today my main task was cleaning out the sample (cut) library, which is very large. Me and the other intern cleaned up the desk, threw things away and alphabetized the sample books and catalogs from all the vendors in the library. Then we sent faxes to vendors to get their discontinued item list, so we then went through the fabrics and threw out all the discontinued items which was tedious and a bit boring. Next I called vendors to order memo samples for a project.

Tues. 5/18 - Week1

I began today by learning how to enter project acknowledgments and receivables into Design Manager. Next I spent majority of the rest of the day hand rendering elevations of draperies and floor plans for the John Schnatter (Papa John) residence at Cherokee Park in Louisville, KY. All of the renderings DGW does are hand drawn and rendered. They have a guy out of office that does all of the perspective renderings, and they look amazing. I used markers and colored pencils and I also learned some new techniques and a lot about shading and high lighting.

Mon. 5/17 - Week1

I was introduced to my supervisor, Gina Gullo. We talked a little about what I would be doing my weeks here. I received my desk, phone and computer and was introduced to all the employees. The first thing I was introduced to was Design Manager Pro which is the firm’s computer system that manages everything for example, purchase orders, vendors, project receivables and a lot more.

I got to go to two project sites, the first was 1.2 million dollar ocean front penthouse suite. The general contractor was there with his team putting in molding, tile and painting. It was neat to get to the end of a project in its final stages. Next I went with a different team of designers to a site to be introduced to a potential project, the project is not the firm’s yet so there hadn’t even been a proposal done yet. It will be a villa house located in a gated community. The house hadn’t even been built yet. We went to the model home (which the Design Group West designed) and took pictures of the things the client liked about the model and also took measurements. This was neat to see the very beginning and the process you have to go through to get a project.