FOREWORD

For decades, the business of interior design has thrived. The discipline’s success—and that of its practitioners—has largely been based on talent in design over talent in business. That equation has borne rooms of unspeakable beauty at the very time that it has doomed some careers to brevity. Never has it been more essential to be successful in both halves of the profession than it is now. The present day thankfully demands seriousness in all aspects of the business of design. Talent and instinctual gifts will always be intrinsically important to the production of great art. However, those ingredients are not enough by themselves. As such, education is of course the cornerstone of any proper design endeavor.

No one is more qualified to “write the book” (figuratively and literally) on the practice than the New York School of Interior Design. In this book, design strategies walk hand in hand with the more mundane, though no less important, practices and intricacies of the profession. The distillation of vital though sometimes nebulous or abstract topics—ranging from how to address color to the implementation of various types of lighting—lives on these pages. So does that which contends with more concrete, quantifiable issues like space planning and how to address a design brief, all while working with clients to achieve their goals.

This book is an essential text for all students of design. Furthermore, it is inspiration and intel for those simply interested in the art and practice of the discipline. I am glad to welcome this book to the important canon of interior design, where it will help make this very worthy career all the more credible through its acknowledgment of the seriousness of its pursuit.

—ALEXA HAMPTON

Principal, Mark Hampton LLC,
and member of the board of trustees for the New York School of Interior Design