Every room needs a spark. A bit of flash, if you will. This can be a hexagon window over the sink or a totem in the shape of a banana tree, the leaves pointing to the sky. There are lots of design opportunities to create a spark in a room.
As many know, I am a poet, professor, artist, and object designer. I publish approximately twelve poems a year in a highly competitive space. I also teach poetry at the HBCU, Texas Southern University. Now, why do you care?
This is where I got my idea for “Sparky Design Choices.” Poets move language forward through diction and syntax. Language lives. Design also lives. Design is redefined through fresh choices in the atypical syntax of objects. Syntax is the order in which items or words are placed. A spark in design is also achieved by adding an unexpected element. In design, we can create a spark in a room by simply turning a painting on the diagonal when installed. Vision and surprise are a designer’s friend.
Sparky design choices catch the viewer off guard, just a bit. It’s not jarring; it is unexpected, yet harmonious. This may be as simple as finishing the patio door trim of a neutral dining room in hunter green. Then add one green glass object to the room, and magic “slips in the back door.” Everything else is quite modern, clean, and neutral to client specifications, but this addition, this spark, pulls the eye and brings life into an otherwise biased palette. This gives the eye a visual rhyme as one enters the room, drawing the eye of the owner and the guest alike. Now, that might be unexpected. That has a spark to it— just a modicum of surprise.
Design can also be sparky in omission. Let’s say I design a lamp with no body. Just a capricious, hovering, bell-shaped flare. No visible base. Merely a soft glow that exhales beyond the shade, floating on an end table like a ghost. Sometimes, design isn’t about what you add to a room but what you choose to leave out. Don’t let the expectation of something blind you to the beauty of its omission.
In poetry, sparky word choices contribute energy to the poem. The words are used in unexpected ways that lengthen the definition of the word and build insight into the poem’s message. In other words, one word can make all the difference in a fourteen-line sonnet. Poets create new uses for words. It is a beautiful thing. It is the same with designers. One object, one spark, changes everything.
Interior and object designers accomplish the same shifts in message, rhyme, and unexpected moments. Let’s use another example: the interior movement of a farmhouse. This is a nice cozy getaway in the woods near a field with a spring-fed pond down a trail. Sounds lovely. What if we photographed the pond and reversed the colors? We would have the pond be dark green, the trees would be a bright teal, and the sky would be lilac. That is a sparky selection for a demure retreat.
My goal with this article is to go against the room’s expectations. This can be done in a small way or a significant movement. The idea is to keep the momentum and desires of the client in mind and then push the envelope for all parties. The room and those who inhabit and visit will be grateful.
Through my Design News Now column “Design Moonshine,” we have discussed the wholesale business and the people who love it. We have considered diversity, bias, boring lamps, wellness, the inevitability of artificial intelligence, heirloom items, and various other topics. Next, in “Design Moonshine,” I will consider the concepts of ugly ducklings, splatter, and starting messy.
