Assessing designers

Kenneth Laidler breaks down a designer's skill set.

Kenneth Laidler, former president of the Association of Professional Interior Designers (APID) has written a paper proposing the continual assessment of interior design practioners. Over the next few months, CID will be publishing exclusive extracts. Here, Laidler provides a breakdown of the different skill sets required by concept designers, visualisers and design technicians

Imaginative skills

Imaginative skills are perhaps most important for the traditional interior designer or ‘concept designer’, the creative thinker who is able to conceive of innovative concepts from an individual thought process. The concept designer will rely heavily on their historical and geographical knowledge, or more likely their ability to research relevant aspects related to a given concept.

The need to produce visuals and visually communicative material is less important for the concept designer than in the past, as specialist illustrators now carry out this role, albeit under the concept designer’s guidance and supervision. A design conceptualiser must understand the technical challenges that his or her concept will create and whilst they may not involve themselves in the full creation of the technical solution, their guidance is critical if technical operatives are to produce detail drawings suitable for a contractor.

Furthermore, the design conceptualiser must be very clear on his or her vision with respect to colour, detail, furniture selection, lighting moods and operational feasibility.

And while they do not need to produce client-presentable visual images, the design conceptualiser must be able to produce sketches that are clear enough for both visualisers and design technicians to transform into full presentation works.

Any concept designer – unless it is his or her wish to select all of the FF&E themselves – must also be able to guide the FF&E specialist, in order to ensure that the furniture, fittings and equipment not only matches, complements and enhances the design concept, but complies with all specificational and operational requirements.

A concept designer will be expected to co-ordinate and closely follow his or her creation through to final completion and handover to the client, liaising with contract managers and interior contractors. They will have to represent the interior consultancy at presentations, site meetings and co-ordination meetings, and will lead the design team on a project by project basis.

Therefore, it follows that the creative or conceptual designer must be informed on all aspects relating to the interior design profession, whilst not necessarily being an expert practitioner in all specialist processes.

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Whilst a fair degree of technical comprehension is required by all interior design personnel (even administrative and secretarial staff), none more so than the design technician. Note that we no longer use the term draughtsman, as no professional interior design consultancy can accept operatives who simply draw, without the necessary technical knowledge and understanding.

The design technician is critical in producing accurate, scaled layouts, elevations and details, to be used to obtain competitive construction bids from interior fit out contractors. Given that, in-depth knowledge of architectural and interior design history and philosophy is not essential, but is nevertheless useful, as interpretation of the concept designer’s initial concepts may rely heavily on the manner in which the design technician interprets a detail, proportion or connection between elements and materials.

Therefore, a full understanding of constructional detailing is required, combined with a knowledge of not only the specificational parameters of the material, but the precise manner in which all materials are fixed, jointed and worked, in order to produce technical details. One of the most underrated yet important aspects of interior design detailing is simply how it is all jointed. All interiors have junctions between walls and floors, walls and ceilings, walls and walls, and so on. Similarly, all items within the interior have the same form of connection.