The Lumasite© Crowd…

It is time again for my bi-monthly diatribe and mass-ridicule of the fresh-faced architects and designers who are just now searching Google and Yahoo for anything “Lumasite.”

Once again, the amount of web hits I get from so-called creatives searching in vein for hope in using this burned-out trend of a design idea and are wandering the internet aimlessly looking for any information on this overused crap that keeps raising its cheap face in the world of architectural products simply amazes me.

Architects and Designers: Beware the simplistic solutions you seek in using materials so over-exposed and trend-dead that you risk irreparable damage to your fledgling careers as you rely on four-year old ideas and concepts that continue to live on in dusty, outmoded design magazines and coffee table books that have littered your design studios since your first years in college.

Your misplaced sense of innovative creativity has somehow duped you into a dream-like state of delusion that corrupts your logical and educated experience in original thought. You have been seduced by projects that have come years before your time and, through the magic of marketing and luscious photography, are insipidly seeping under the back door of better judgment and mutating into a virus of mediocrity and complacency. You have been reduced to copying what someone else has done. You have become the enemy of design. You are what you hate.

As you admit to yourself that you have forgone the ideals and imagination that led you into the design world to begin with, you will catch yourself relying on the past for the future of your own creativity: a dangerous and career-ending position to be in. As other creative innovators mockingly ridicule your choices in design materials behind your back, you will lie to yourself in order to preserve your own destiny. Your updated portfolio of projects will show a history of regression; there will be presented, for all to see, a narrative timeline of your professional undoing. Your demise as a creator will lead to serious mental and physical collapse that will be witnessed by clients and family alike.

Your choice is clear. Quit looking for ideas and materials that have come and gone before your time. You must resist the temptation to emulate the work of others – passing it off as your own – and the laziness of specifying a look that no longer has meaning in the semiotics of modern design. Seek truth in finding other solutions to your client’s problems and make the conscious decision that, as 2005 begins, you will destroy the 5 or 7 year-old design references you keep dragging out and pouring over. It is time for an extreme makeover of your ideas. Restore your dignity now!

Feeling Better in 2005

The month of December was its usual year-end business nightmare. The last week of November brought on a mild case of the flu which, after a week of over-the-counter medical practice, left me with a false sense of wellness. I took that notion to believe that I could do a large clean-up of the shop to get ready for the end of the year push as well as continue on the quest of finishing the upper-floor remodel job I started at the beginning of the year. Armed with brooms, trash barrels, compressed air and dust masks, I proceeded with the task of eliminating years of metal dust buildup. Big mistake. My recovering lungs, fresh from two weeks of coughing, could not be protected enough from the dense, metal-laden air that I created in the process of purification. I developed what doctors call “a bit of a serious pneumonia problem.” They were actually more direct: “You have pneumonia.” I only figured this out after enduring a weekend of severe pain and torture with fevers pushing 103 and a host of symptoms that make one feel that death is immanent. By Monday, just getting to the doctor’s office was a powerful lesson in the frailty of the human body.

At any rate, with modern medical technology now working for me, I was able to recover enough to enjoy Xmas with the family. My lungs still hurt when I would cough or move certain ways but I was back to looking normal and walking in an upright position.

Of course, my clients suffered right along with me as their projects got pushed further and further back. Luckily, they were all very understanding and knew that there really was not anything they could do anyways…

This last week brought a new sense of energized well being as I felt more like myself and with that, the actual desire to get back to work.

A couple of lessons learned in this experience:

How scary to get sick and not be able to work. I am a pretty healthy person and even a cold only bothers me for a couple of days. To literally be flat on your back for a week is weird. I can hardly imagine what it would be like to be bed-ridden for months on end.

Even disability insurance would never cover the overhead for even a small business. I had to really do some song and dance with my landlords, vendors, utility bills and some other payables to keep them on my side while I tried to make up the time lost (which equates to money lost) in order to pay bills.

A sickness or injury is never planned for obviously and so it was my fault in not having any backup plan for project schedules or outstanding bills. Luckily, the current projects I was working on did not have any critical timelines attached to them or I would have seriously F’ed it up for them. If I was working on a club or restaurant with an opening date that has fallen during this time, what would that have done to the project? Mental note to self: include language in the contract to cover this contingency.

This was a minor illness that has a prognosis for full recovery in our modern day. The really frightening thing is there are illnesses and injuries that you can not recover from so quickly and that, my friend, is probably the most serious setback for the individual entrepreneur that one could experience. Money issues can be solved. Client problems can be corrected. Health issues are not so forgiving. Your health is your number-one asset that needs to be protected.