The Litmus Question
We’re vocal about this whole concept of taking time to really know a person. We have our own catalogue of questions that we ask every new client, it’s our chance to begin opening up all those little hidden opportunities to express personality and history through design. But there’s a point where questions lose their impact and just being with the person, in a variety of circumstances and surroundings, brings out far more than the questions ever could. So how does this approach to people and to design help from another perspective?
If you’re looking to build a partnership with an interior designer, there’s one major question you need to ask.
“How long have you been working with how many of your clients?”
This speaks volumes! It says how much a client likes the design work they have received, how much they like the process and the team. If a designer has a majority of repeat clientele, there is real confidence in the relational equity that’s been built. This is the kind of designer you want in your life. This is someone who takes the time to really know the person they are working with and the design that will reveal your personality. This is someone you trust to really know your taste and style!
But it’s practical too. Repeat business means you have a sustainable relationship on every level. On high-end design work, many dollars are handed to a designer. Repeated work with clients is a signal of good financial stewardship (which is where most designer/client relationships break down). We present options that are based on facts and experience to improve the health, safety, and welfare of our clients by heightening their interaction with the space. Putting into practice our "evidence-based" design background is fundamental to interior design. A space isn’t limited by just being pretty, it’s reflective of its user in the way that it functions as well. Sometimes, you need to be practically inventive. Other times, you need to know when to let loose. The right designer reads this well time and time again.
Large egos don’t create repeat work. When someone has a long line of healthy repeat clientele, it’s like getting the rap sheet on that designer’s core motivations. Are they about glorifying their own “style” with someone else’s money? Or are they out to really serve the people they’re working alongside.
The Backstory
It makes sense that this big question has become so important to us. It’s really the core measure for how well we accomplish our purpose of designing spaces that truly reflect who a person is. The rudimentary measure for most businesses goes, “How likely are your customers to recommend you to someone else?” But even that is too low of a standard. We want people recommending as much as we want them to come back and work with us again and again! There’s a blend of old friends and new relationships that we value, growing ideal scenarios in which to create beautiful work together. Without the new friends, we can get stale, without the old friends, we become ungrounded. There’s a balance here!
Recently, a builder that had worked with Amy back in her Utah days called in, unannounced. He and his wife had, without ever voicing it to anyone else, spent the past decade dreaming up a home that they had always pictured having Amy design. What a pleasant shock and surprise! To be hired to work with someone who so deeply remembered a collaborative experience that left such an impression! Opportunities like this are ordained to succeed. This is the right foot to start on.
Closer to home, we had the chance to come back to a prior project in Utopia, Texas. Our clients-turned-friends wanted to build an outbuilding cabin that closely mirrored the design of their home which we had helped to complete in years prior. But the original design needed to be scaled properly to the footprint, feel unique as a structure, but still very much reflect the intention that drove and created the initial project. You couldn’t just miniaturize everything, it has to still feel “purposeful” and so the process we had come through together on the main house regained momentum. We approached it with the “values” we had established from the first design which created a consistent foundation for the new work.
For another home, we completed a refresh on some of our early Hill Country work. Part of this client’s personality is to mirror the trends of the day; this person enjoys the act of a good visual “cleanup” every few years as well as the creative process of interior design. This is so much fun, a real chance to learn and grow. We are able to see what lasted, what didn’t, what should always stay and what elements should change and refresh. The whole design challenge created one of those rare opportunities to adapt and iterate through a process that is so much fun for this client. We just enjoy designing together, and this home is the canvas upon which we will get to paint a new vision every few years.
Context is where the learning happens
Time together can never be replaced by questions. To get to know someone, you really have to just do the daily, overcome some obstacles, learn what lifts a person up and what brings them down across every situational context. This is where you learn to trust each other and see the intuitive benefits of the person you’re working alongside. Working with the same people over and over again has such powerful and subtle advantages.
A skillfulness begins to develop that bears even more fruit to the work. Like an old couple who has been dancing for decades, you begin to anticipate each other, you know how to communicate quickly in subtle gestures and you can see where you are both going; a shared imagination. In the design world, to get to this point is an absolute pinnacle of joy! For client and designer to work together in a context of trust and shared vision often yields some of the most beautiful and satisfying work. Spaces, created so seamlessly that they are perfectly transparent to the heartbeat and vision that designed it. You’ve been in rooms like this before, they are those “special” environments that just “feel” a certain way.
Walk in to a place that is seamless, then learn that the two rooms you have seen were built ten years apart from each other. Gasp in amazement. For us, this is one of those great compliments we share with our finest clients and friends. This is the kind of work we truly dream of doing.
To design well, we must take time to know and taking time to know someone takes time.
*These writings are a collaborative effort between Slaughter Design Studio, and Ben Rodgers Pivotol. We do the designing and thinking, they capture it in words and “essence” so we can share it with you!