Innovate

Cindy Allen -- Interior Design, 1/1/2010 12:00:00 AM

A few days ago, I was asked by a charming interlocutor and design junky about "templates" for this magazine. Posed by someone genuinely curious to learn how we create each month's issue and deliver it to press, the question, by itself, was an innocent one, and I would never hold it against him for a fraction of a second. But even the word template has a nails-on-a-blackboard sound to this editor. And it festered. It evoked everything that's wrong in our business—hell, in any business. Template spells shortcuts, common denominators, good-enoughs. I am virally allergic to it, particularly nowadays. Tired old templates just don't cut it anymore, and it's a tad disheartening to witness how many companies still engage in '90's-style cookie-cutter approaches to our sector's crisis: Ax as many heads as you can, plus a few more for good measure, slash budgets to oblivion, stick to formulas. . . .

What's needed in trying times is sheer undiluted originality—investing in ourselves, our craft, and the people that we share it with. Nah, we don't have a template for Interior Design. We have a master plan that we keep developing, adapting, and enriching. And it will stay that way, always a work in progress, as we search for the prosperity of tomorrow.

What's your master plan?