Get Inspired.

A big aspect of being a good designer is allowing yourself to be inspired. Whether it be out in the real world or behind my computer screen, letting inspiration seep into my pores and turning it around into a great design is a huge goal I have for 2013.

Todays post has just a few of my favorite images from the amazing tumbler A Note on Design. This tumbler is filled with beautifully organized images oozing with inspiration.

I'm officially in love and plan to stalk this website daily for an inspiration fix

Check it out

A Note on Design <3

Educate Through Experience. Fig & Olive.

My dream job is definitely to design hotels and restaurants. The creativity that comes with getting to design those types of spaces is exactly what any young designer dreams about.

This resolution is simple… educate through experience. I want to become inspired by fellow designers work, or see what they did wrong and learn from their mistakes. I love going out to eat, and I am now living across the river from the food capital of the world. How could (within this next year) I not take advantage of all the restaurants, boutiques and hotels just three miles away?! Of course I am not going to limit my inspiration just to the big apple. Anywhere I go this year I want to train my brain to actually take notice to what I care about most, the design.

This first space is a restaurant in the meatpacking district, within New York City, Fig & Olive. This mini chain, having restaurants in several other areas in New York as well as one on the West coast, was purely amazing. Its simple concept of using exquisite ingredients and mixing them with their incredibly vast collection of olive oils leaves your stomachs feeling full, yet light, at the end of the meal. But I am so not a food person. Don’t get me wrong I love food but I am not expert and will not pretend to be, what I am more interested in is the design of the space.

The design was simply lovely. Incorporating beautiful bottles of olive oil with real plants entangled with white lights was a perfect way to demonstrate what the meal was going to incorporate just by walking to your table. The entire restaurant was a great use of space. There is an extremely large shelving system in the center that held more bottles, which created a really ingenious division of space. I also really appreciated how there were several areas of the restaurant, which made it seem like there were really no bad seat in the house.

All and all I really enjoyed my time at Fig & Olive. There was not a corner untouched with perfectly incorporated design. 

www.figandolive.com

Showroom Heaven

At the moment my job is a little limited, in which it is strictly office design.  My dream job is definitely in the commercial design industry so getting this experience in that field (even if it is just office design) is still great. Most of the time I am just in the office drawing, organizing samples, consulting in meetings, etc. but the other day I got to go on a field trip.

It was just like being back in middle school and getting to leave my small classroom to go anywhere. Getting to change your surroundings, even if it wasn’t a destination you were actually into, was always fun. Now add 10 years and a design show room and you’ve got one EXTREMELY happy designer.

Although it is not a resolution, or goal, my wish was certainly fulfilled when stepping into the Knoll showroom in New York’s meat packing district. Even though the classic pieces are just inanimate objects, getting to touch, see, and even sit on these exquisite works was unlike anything else. After spending the last four years of my life constantly drawing these classic pieces in AutoCAD and Google Sketchup, experiencing them in person was like meeting a celebrity you’ve only ever seen in pictures.

I tried to take as many pictures as I could, while still being professional during this work meeting. So hope you enjoyed these very colorful views of Knoll Inc.

B.I.T. of Health

Food Group Pyramid

One of the most common resolutions across the globe is clearly to better ones health. I am no exception to this common occurrence. Although I certainly, am like most woman and want to loose an lb. or two, this resolution is more about actually balancing out my carb-dominated diet.

Carbohydrates are aFRICKENmazing and just like sweets or salty foods that means an overload of them is clearly not good. I’ve tried in the past to do the whole “no carb” diet and would always fail miserably within weeks, if not days. So this time I am just aiming to balance my diet. Bringing the other important food groups into my life and not just living with the pale one. My theory is that if I get used to munching on celery instead of chips then slowly easing out the bad foods will be a sinch.

For all of you out there like me (carb-lovers) here are some easy tips to stay with your balanced life-style.

• ·      Ease into it. Don’t try to overload yourself and completely cut out your favorites. The likelihood that this life-style choice becoming a failed diet will surly rise.
• ·      READ. When going food shop actually read what you are getting. Even Whole Foods sells fattening foods.
• ·      Prepare. Prepare any fruits and vegetables as soon as you get home from the grocery store. Chop the celery, wash the strawberries, make it as easy as possible for you to munch on instead of a bad snack.
• ·      Just don’t buy it. For foods that you don’t absolutely need and know you can’t help yourself to completely beast down, like chips, ice cream, donuts, just don’t buy it. If you don’t have it in the house then you have no excuse. (And those with children who buy it for them, they honestly don’t need it either.)
• ·      Go nuts. Nuts are actually a great source of protein and are also proven to fill you up faster and keep you full longer. Pistachios are apparently the best at this but if they’re not your favorite go crazy with yours.
• ·      Portions. Portion control is always a talked about with food, but is definitely the hardest part. My favorite tip is to uses smaller dishes. The smaller the dish the less you can put on.
• ·      Eat Colorfully. Color is so important when it comes to keeping a well balanced diet. If you try to eat all the natural colors throughout the day you are certainly achieving your goal.

Hope these quick tips helped. I will keep you updated on my balanced resolution and will definitely have more tips to come!

Insta. Calendar.

A resolution (at least to me) is a goal and/or something you want to change about yourself for the New Year. My first resolution is definitely strictly goal status. It is purely a fun ambition that would be awesome to accomplish. Inspired by a random web search and my brilliant coworker, my first resolution is an Insta Calendar.

 Just like many others, I am on Instagram (@ssarahfinkss ) about a billion times a day. I usually only post weekly and mainly use it to stalk friends and like their lives through pictures. Yesterday, however, I found this website http://printstagr.am/ . Most of the stuff on the website didn’t appeal to me, but then I found the calendar you can make of all, or selected, posts.

So my first resolution is to take a gram a day for this entire year. This way, next year I can go to http://printstagr.am/ and get an awesome calendar made. I will then have that daily reminder of what I did each day last year.

Now this is clearly just for fun so  I’ll try to make sure to keep you updated on this quirky goal.