10 Things You Should Know About Becoming an Interior Designer

Are you always receiving compliments on your interior design taste? Do you love decorating rooms and arranging furniture? If you answered yes to these questions, then maybe a career in interior design is right for you.
Before you make a life-altering career choice, there are some things you should know about the design world. Interior designers face challenges every day; some of these may not appeal to you, while others may excite you and open doors to a career that you never thought was possible.
Read on to learn the 10 things you should know before becoming an interior designer.

1. There Is a Difference Between Decorators and Designers

What’s the difference between interior decorators and interior designers? In one word: education.
Literally anyone can become an interior decorator. Someone who loves playing with colors, fabrics and textiles can become a decorator by simply printing business cards and promoting themselves to clients. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but educational background is also important.
On the other hand, an interior designer must have an accredited education; an associate or bachelor’s degree is a requisite for working in the interior design field. Do you want to pursue an education, or jump immediately into the decorating world? Keep reading to see if interior design could be the right fit for you.

2. You Must Have a Knack for Design

It may seem obvious, but in order to become an interior designer, you need to have an innate flair for color, spatial arrangements, architecture and textiles. Do you enjoy decorating your home and get lots of compliments on your decor? That doesn’t necessarily mean you should be an interior designer, but it’s certainly a good sign.
The first step to a successful career is to follow your passion. After all, doing something you love will never feel like work. Take this fun quiz to see which field you should consider majoring in. Is a career in interior design in your future?

3. Interior Design Isn’t All Fabric and Fun

While fabrics, furniture and color may play a large role in interior design, there are plenty of other tasks that are required of interior designers — many of which may seem less like fun and more like work.
Interior designers need to be educated in the history of design, the structural integrity of buildings, building codes, ergonomics, spatial concepts, ethics, psychology, computer-aided drawing (CAD) and much more.
It might seem that interior designers are expected to be Jacks (or Jills) of all trades, doesn’t it? This broad range of skills is required because designers work with not only homeowners, but also builders, architects, government agencies and business owners.  To become a successful interior designer, one needs to be educated and well-rounded.

4. The Salary Isn’t as High as You Think

Show me the money! After all, shouldn’t someone with such a vast education get paid well? It depends. Statistics show that the median salary of an entry-level interior designer in the U.S. is $42,380 per year.
Of course, this depends on a lot of factors, such as education, location, work experience and size of the firm/company. An interior designer at a furniture company will most likely make less than a designer who works for a high-end architectural firm.
Essentially, you can dictate your rate of pay by gaining as much exposure and experience as possible. Someone with education in the fields of architecture, building codes/laws and structural design will more likely become financially successful.

5. You Need to Be a People Person

Ask interior designers to share their experiences, and they will surely relate some horror stories of past clients. People are finicky, especially when it comes to their homes. While some clients have clear goals in mind, others may think they know what they want only to discover that they hate the final product and are dissatisfied with your work.
A successful interior designer is a people pleaser and a mitigator (and sometimes a mind reader) — someone who can steer clients toward a favorable outcome while making them feel they are in full control of the design choices. Interior designers are constantly balancing their design decisions and their clients’ desires. It’s not a cakewalk, to say the least.

6. You Need to Develop a Portfolio

A picture says a thousand words, and this is definitely true when it comes to an interior designer’s portfolio. You can talk all day long about colors and textiles, but unless you have an outstanding portfolio that showcases your designs and projects, your successes will be few and far between.
If you are just coming out of school and are new to the job market, it may be necessary to offer your services for free or at a reduced rate. This is probably the best way to get a portfolio started; it’s also a great way to get to know local merchandisers and suppliers, and develop a rapport for future projects.
Everybody starts at the bottom. With some effort, experience and proper marketing, you can become a successful force in the interior design field.

7. Competition Is Fierce in Interior Design

Interior design is a competitive business. The key to success is getting yourself noticed. As mentioned above, an amazing designer portfolio will certainly help you land jobs.
Another important factor is acquiring an extensive education. The more you know, the better off you will be. Consider looking toward future trends such as population growth, designing for the elderly, modern architecture and green design; education within these specific fields of design will give you the upper hand in the job market.
It is also a good idea to stay abreast of design trends by reading design publications and websites such as Freshome, communicating with fellow designers and following a mentor. When competition is high, you need to work hard in order to get noticed and rise to the top.

8. Virtual Designers Have an Opportunity

When people hire an interior designer, they may not realize that they can actually hire from anywhere in the world. Yes, designers can telecommute, too! Thanks to technological innovations such as Skype and design software, designers are discovering a whole new world of virtual design.
Although several free online virtual room design tools available to the general public, interior designers have an edge on this competition thanks to their exclusive relationships with elite design lines. Several high-end textile companies offer discounts to designers working in the trade, thereby allowing them to get their clients the best prices.

9. Designers Must Know Local Laws and Codes

This is where would-be designers may opt to avoid the education and become decorators, thereby avoiding some of the doldrum of learning building codes and local laws.
Some of the details can certainly be boring, but they are required knowledge for interior designers. Learning about plumbing codes, electricity and load-bearing walls may not excite you, but it is required. Staying abreast of such things gives interior designers an advantage and marketability that decorators simply do not have.

10. It’s Not About Your Style, It’s About Theirs

While designers can offer their clients a wide range of design styles to choose from, it is important to remember that it is up to the clients to choose what style suits them best.
Just because designers are educated and have good taste does not make their choices superior to their clients. The interior designer’s job is to offer a variety of styles and direct the client toward the right design choice while allowing the client to feel in charge.
For example, you may work as an interior designer for years and never design a house that suits your personal tastes. It is all about the clients’ style — and you must put your own aside.
After reading all the pros and cons of becoming an interior designer, do you think it’s one you’d like to pursue? If you’re considering interior design as a career, then remember all 10 of the things mentioned above. The field may be competitive, but with a little hard work and a stellar portfolio, you can become a successful interior designer.

Read more: http://freshome.com/2014/10/13/10-things-you-should-know-about-becoming-an-interior-designer/

IDC FutureScape: Worldwide CMO 2017 Predictions

The following predictions are excerpted from IDC's 2017 CMO FutureScape report which provides additional details and guidance. (Here's the summary webcast.) Of course, no one can have 10 top priorities, so pick and choose the one or two that will be most effective for your organization for the next 12 months and nail them. Then go on to some of the others. By working your way through as many of these forces you feel apply to your business, you will be able to offer customers value that your competitors simply cannot match. If you don’t, be prepared for the pain of being on the wrong side of that equation.

• Prediction 1: Superhero CMOs Emerge - By 2020, the first superhero CMOs will emerge because they received C-Level permission to disrupt traditional go-to-market operations. IDC predicts that we will see pockets of break-through in CMO leadership. This will be demonstrated by individuals who have exceptional leadership skills and in the face of long-odds, have brought meaningful change to their marketing organizations.  The "Superhero CMO" will be one who has executed real change -- not just the aspirational change that is depicted on a PowerPoint slide. Here are IDC's criteria to identify these Superhero CMO's; and where to look (or not look) for them. 
• Prediction 2: Boardroom Battle for the Customer - By 2020, 25% of CEO’s will appoint a Chief Customer Officer (CCO) in an attempt to unify the imperative of customer-centricity. Who on the C-Level leadership team will emerge as the most effective agent to deliver the customer’s growing persistence for a better experience?  Is Customer Centricity a cultural value; is it everyone’s job; or should it be the domain of a single executive leader? If it is the latter, which one? This is the emerging “Boardroom Battle for the Customer”.
• Prediction 3: "Free Range" Content Invasion - By 2020, more than 50% of a company's commercial content will be created outside of marketing's direct control. Content marketing – it's not just for marketers anymore. While content experts will determine the most strategic aspects of a company's commercial communication, CMO's must prepare to leverage content from a wide range of sources. Today, content marketing stops at marketing's silo walls. Full commercial content – all the content needed to conduct commerce, is much more. Opening up marketing's borders will cause initial angst, but it's a parade that won't, and shouldn't, be stopped 
• Prediction 4: Journey Budgets get Reshuffled - By 2019, one-third of today's “awareness” budget will be redirected to stages later in the buyer's journey. Marketing's programs budget is poised on the brink of a major overhaul. Historically, nearly 50% of a tech companies company’s marketing program budget is spent on awareness. However, CMOs are driving funds out of the traditional (but vague) job of "awareness building" to jobs later in the buyer's journey. 
• Prediction 5: "Dark Social" Shines - By 2018, 15% of companies will shift the majority of their social marketing focus out of the public sphere and into private groups and messaging apps. Once again, consumers are charging ahead of brands. Consumer use of messaging apps has already hit mainstream (worldwide use of the biggest messaging apps now surpasses use of the biggest social brands) and yet this medium is hardly on the radar of most marketers.  But where buyers go, marketing will follow.
• Prediction 6: Events are the Main Event - By 2017, events will surpass advertising as the top marketing program investment in more than 50% of B2B IT vendors. As marketers dash to digital in so many of their marketing program investments, events have emerged as an important counterbalance to this digital shift. Over the last three years spending on digital marketing has increased from 31% to 43% of the average marketing programs. Despite the rapid growth in digital marketing, events have remained the second largest marketing program investment only behind advertising. But this gap is shrinking and many industry leaders now have events as their number one marketing program investment.  
• Prediction 7: Marketing GO! - By 2020, 20% of IT Vendors will have augmented reality pilots in place that will serve as the foundation for immersive marketing. Through the advent of Augmented Reality (AR) technologies marketers are now able to add digital information and/or digital objects to their buyer's real world experiences, creating the holistic and encapsulating engagements that are at the foundation of immersive marketing. By allowing marketers to present relevant, personalized, and targeted information to a buyer based on his or her current location and/or activity engagement marketers are able to move beyond a single, one time, albeit (sometimes) memorable experience and into a continuous stream of value addition for their buyers. 
• Prediction 8: DX Fails without CX-OS - By 2020, 50% of digital transformation (DX) initiatives will fail due to the lack of an end-to-end customer experience orchestration service (CX-OS). CX-OS is IDC's term for the future platform on which enterprises will be able to successfully accomplish digital transformation. It is a low latency, high activation environment that connects applications and datasets across customer related activities in the enterprise. Through open APISs and microservices, It delivers a growing set of software services that manage workflows, decisions, interaction events, data, processes, audiences, customer IDs, security, etc. Executed well, a CX-OS will connect all interactions with the underlying processes that companies will use to communicate with customers and perform activities on the customer’s behalf. 
• Prediction 9: Bots Break Advertising - By 2020, 40% of e-commerce transactions will be enabled by cognitive/AI personal shoppers and conversational commerce.The next generations of digital personal assistants (aka Siri, GoogleNow, Cortana, Viv, Alexa, etc.) will be advanced cognitive agents able to conduct commerce on behalf of consumers. This will result in an explosion of bot-to-bot transactions. 
• Prediction 10: A Message in Every Machine - By 2020, 15% of display advertising will be executed via connected devices such as vehicles, wearables, facilities, and in-home. Smart devices will become pervasive in daily life. Almost everything including our homes, vehicles, shops, offices, cities even our clothing, appliances, furniture, product packaging and more will be capable of detecting our presence and interacting with us either directly or via smartphones. This will have huge implications for marketers and advertising. The opportunities to add value will rise but so will the risk of intrusiveness and blocking. Marketers that master to balance these conflicting elements in the new sense and respond world will have their audiences to themselves and pull ahead of the fast followers and laggards.

"Marketers will live or die depending on which side of the disruption sword they are on," according to Gerry Murray, Research Analyst with IDC's CMO Advisory. "CMOs need to get past the internal disruption caused by technology and start using all the new tools and data to create new ways of engaging customers. Marketers need to shift customer relationships from using context to deliver messages to ensuring continuity and delivering value. They must use data driven insights to make the professional and personal lives of their customers better."

 This article was originally posted here