IT’S ALL ABOUT THE EDIT
Architecture and Interior Design are truly unique professions, blending art and science, while leaving ample room for creativity. For those who've embarked on DIY home projects or renovations, the overwhelming nature of design is familiar. Social media platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and even TikTok have made access to design and other forms of creative inspiration readily available, but applying the ideas that resonate with you to your own space can prove challenging. Amidst the creative process, one crucial yet often overlooked step is the importance of the Edit.
Editing happens throughout the design process, and there are several key points where editing really makes a difference.
Function & Intent
At the early stages of a project, a natural inclination is to gather inspirational materials like concept images, or refer to articles, magazines, or social media content that aligns with your goals for your project. It’s great to have reference material to understand the direction, however, it’s important to understand the intention and function behind the inspiration. This is where the first round of editing typically happens. Inspiration and concept images rarely apply precisely to your project, and require adjustments to make them work based on the surrounding architecture, budget, and countless other factors. Getting to the root of what you like about the concept image makes all the difference. If you were to look at a concept image of a fireplace and hearth, is it the materials that resonate with you? Or perhaps the profile and proportions of the trim? Or the application and specific details of the hearth? How does that apply back to your project, and how can we make it make sense for your space?
Taking a moment to step back and analyzing why you are attracted to an image makes it much easier to understand how it could make sense for you in your space, and how that translates (whether it changes, or can be addressed with a completely different solution).
Visual Cohesion & Defining Style
Another important aspect of editing is visual cohesion. There are countless solutions to every design challenge, and editing is the key to finding how they all fit together. Think of design like an essay. Your project should have a thesis – a grounding direction or central idea. All of the design decisions and concepts incorporated into the project should relate back to and support your thesis, whether it’s as simple as an overarching aesthetic (mid-century modern, Scandinavian, etc.), or driven by an abstract/complex concept (like designing a bakery around the warm feeling of a cabin in the rain). The moves and solutions in your project don’t have to be literal, but they have to make sense in relation to each other and your underlying thesis. Even if your desired aesthetic is an eclectic, maximalist, and heavily-decorated space, finding the underlying theme and commonalities makes all the difference. Even in an eclectic or maximalist space that is intentionally mismatched, your pieces should still coordinate. You probably wouldn’t get a very good grade on your paper if your body paragraphs had nothing to do with the subject, would you?
Balance, Emphasis, & Hierarchy
Achieving these factors in a design are the goals of the editing process. As you can see now, though, there’s a lot of aspects to editing a design that lead to them. Thinking about your essay again, your first draft likely isn’t what you’d submit. It’s okay to cut things out. Not every idea has to make it into the final edit. If you understand the reasoning behind why you wanted something for your project, you can find other ways to incorporate it without copying a detail exactly from an image. Even if all your ideas relate to each other and your thesis, they might not all be relevant. Let a few moments shine. Cramming in every detail you can think of might actually undermine your thesis, or take away from other key points and risk losing the reader (or in the case of design, the occupant/user of the space).
Something that encompasses balance, emphasis, and hierarchy is the use of negative space. Not every part of your design needs a “solution”. The key moments of your project will guide you, and it’s okay to leave some space to breathe between them. (In fact, we encourage it!)
Thinking back to our school days, writing about editing reminded me of a great quote that a professor dropped in a lecture. “Interior Design is the Architecture of negative space”. Editing is the driving force behind that idea, and using it intentionally is what will elevate your project tothe next level!