Design Public is a fantastic entrepreneurial story. Started by Drew and his partner Sina in 2003, they’ve truly turned their passion into a successful and personally-fulfilling business.

Thanks for talking to us Drew! Let’s start with one of my favorite questions – what’s been your happiest moment at Design Public?

I think my happiest moment was when our company first passed $1000 a day in revenue back in the early days, because by my back of the envelope calculation that meant that I could feed myself and wouldn’t have to take another job any time soon. True, I was only eating ramen, but still — the feeling of personal freedom was and is intoxicating. I go to bed every night excited about getting up the next morning and working on my business. I never expected to find this in life. I very quickly went from a design fan who started a company to an entrepreneur who happens to work in design. Entrepreneurship has become my true passion.

How did Design Public start? Why did you choose to start a design shop?

We started in 2003. Sina Djafari and I had graduated from business school and were focusing in on the design industry as one we were very passionate about. (Sina has a degree in engineering and industrial design; I’m just a big fan). Our research led us down a lot of dead-end streets — we thought at one time that we were going to create slipcovers, for example — before we just said “the hell with it” and threw up a website to learn more about the industry and what sells. The logic was that we’d gain experience and then create our own products. Low and behold the retail part took off and seven years later we are still focused on retail and customer service.

What a great story! What makes Design Public a special destination to shop online?

When we started the company, we wanted to focus on two big things — product and the public. We launched in 2003, and at the time most design was sold through high-end, condescending showrooms. You either knew your stuff or you weren’t part of the cool club. My business partner Sina and I looked in the mirror and knew we were not designers — we were design fans. So we wanted to build a site that aimed the spotlight on the “design public” — the customers and designers that take part in the design conversation — and let them speak in their own words. We were the first design retailer to blog and start throwing up designer and customer interviews, and it is something core to our mission. And today our focus is on delivering a great customer experience with knowledgeable, fun phone “design consultants” who can help you choose the perfect item for your home.

How has the site changed since you started? What have you guys learned along the way?

The industry has become a lot more crowded! It seems like you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a new modern design shop. The barriers to entry are so low — it takes all of $50 a month to set up a web store — that more and more entrants pour into the market every year. So we’ve learned that in order to create a good niche, you have to earn repeat business — you have to focus on your customer and on exceeding their expectations so that they come back. Starting a store is easy, but this part is very, very hard.

That makes a lot of sense. Let’s talk about design for a minute. What do you look for, and how do you find new designers and objects?

We look for great emerging design. Established brands are available everywhere these days, so we wanted to focus on the new, fresh stuff. Thing that solve real problems or create an emotional attachment in the buyer. In the early days, we pounded the pavement at design schools out in San Francisco and at ICFF here in NYC. Today we do a little of that, but rely more and more on customer recommendations and designer referrals.

What new item are you most excited about, and what are your favorite “classics” ?

I’m a fan of all Blu Dot items — I love those guys. Everything they make is well thought out. Take the Chicago 8-box for example. It ships flat-pack, so it reduces waste and shipping cost. And it is essentially one piece of furniture repeated eight times to reduce manufacturing cost. Brilliant. I’d put them in our “classics” category since we’ve been selling them since the beginning. As for new items, right now I’m backing the Stadler Form Otto Fan. It’s a bit of a departure from the categories we usually merchandise, but it’s functional and has a great stylish wood panel detail that is exciting.

What’s been the hardest part of starting your company?

It’s been walking the line between entrepreneur and developer. My business partner Sina would agree. We did a lot of the software development that allows us to manage shipments and operations of over 150 different design vendors. But when we have our head in the code, we aren’t able to lead or focus on the big picture. So it takes a lot of mental discipline to carve out time to do both and ensure you are always being productive.

How many people are a part of your team? What’s your office like?
We are a small team — a couple in marketing, a couple in operations and merchandising, and a strong customer service team. We are also virtual — so we don’t have a company HQ. Our team works from all over the US, and we love the fact that our approach allows for a ton of individual flexibility in work style. I spent May working from Paris, for example. Many of our customer service team have small children, so they can balance company time with family time. I really love this aspect of our culture — it’s what I wanted when I started a business. Today I’m typing this from a personal office I have off Madison Square Park in NYC and I’m on IM with about eight people in eight states.

It definitely sounds like you’re living the dream! So inspiring. Last question – what advice do you have for fledgling entrepreneurs?

Wow, I have enough to fill a book! I could pass on some truisms like “just go for it” or “keep on trying”, but I’m not sure how helpful those really are. The thing that has helped me the most has been “iterate quickly”. Get your product out the door as soon as you can, even if it isn’t perfect. The feedback you’ll receive from the market is gold.

When did you decide to start Fair Folks & a Goat?

Aurora: This is something that Anthony had been thinking about for a while. We met and started working on this just about exactly a year ago – September 1st. Anthony had this idea and he told me about it. It was exactly the kind of thing that I wanted to be involved in. It seemed like a project that had heart. Something that would keep me up at night, and I would want to be up working on it. We officially opened the New York space on November 1st.

Anthony: I lived down in the village, and I would walk around at night all the time. I would see these beautiful houses, and I was living in a 350 sq. ft. apartment on the top floor of a 6-floor walk-up. And I was thinking that there a lot of people, like my friends and I, that were living similar experiences. I was so hungry to take in New York, but I was seeing so much of it via New York Magazine and the internet.

There’s all these worlds that you aren’t in, that are behind closed doors.

Anthony: Yeah, and I wanted a place that could function the way these magazines were functioning for me. But rather than flipping through pages and reading about art and culture and fashion and cuisine, I could walk in and experience them with other people. Walking around the village, seeing all these beautiful townhouses, I said to myself, “This is why I came to New York. Not to live in this hovel!”

So Aurora and I started talking. If we could display those old, iconic images that we grew up reading about in the Fitzgerald stories and the Edith Wharton stories and the old movies we watched… I wasn’t seeing them in my life, but I was still looking for them, endlessly. We had big ideas to open a community space which gave that to people. They have their job, they have their home, and then they have this third place called Fair Folks for art, culture, and conversation. That’s what we’re hoping to grow.

How did you find this beautiful space that you’re in?

Anthony: I used to live here. I think I was either going to the Guggenheim or the Met, and I saw all these buildings, and a sign that said, “Carnegie Hill District.” When I got home, I looked it up online and started browsing through spaces just for fun. I wanted to see what the inside of one of these places looked like. That was really it – I didn’t expect it to change my life dramatically. Then I walked into this room. I tried to play it cool, but as soon as I left, all I could think was, “How am I going to get to that point?” I went back to my old job with a new sense of drive, and got out of my old lease, and moved in here. It was just something that once I saw it, had to happen.

When Aurora and I were kicking around the idea for Fair Folks, we were thinking that we had to find space in the West Village, or near Lafayette Street, somewhere downtown. We looked at all kinds of properties, but we wanted a different narrative. When someone walks into our space, we want them to feel transported. We want them to forget what they’re used to. And it works here, with our entrance and our staircase, and the fact that you have to take a physical journey uptown. So this space lent to a lot of the things we wanted to do, understanding tradition and things that will forever be beautiful and connecting them to things that are contemporary.

Can you talk about some of the events you’ve had here, and how you’ve been using the space to make that connection?

Aurora: When we first started, our plan was to do teas on the weekends. Having people come together around a cup of tea was the initial way to get people to come to the space and stay for a little while. I think it’s something that speaks to an older way of socializing that people aren’t used to anymore, but it doesn’t have to be so out of the ordinary. We still do those, and we’ve been upping the number of special events that we’ve been having. There have been brunches, and musical performances…

That seems like it would go really well.

Aurora: Yeah, it was great. One of them was Meshiya Lake, who’s a musician from New Orleans. It was great to have that bridge between this space and our newer space in New Orleans. Her band and her are ragtime, definitely from another era, and having them lined up here – it was really transformative. The windows were all open, and there were people out on the street who stopped and listened. When the band realized that there were so many people out there watching, they all leaned out the window and played to them. It was really cool.

Anthony: And the acoustics in here were amazing. It’s what the room was built for, I think. There was no microphone.

Aurora: We keep trying to get other musicians to come in and do a show for us, because it was great.

Anthony: The guy that lived in here before was a sound engineer for Lenny Kravitz, so he wrote a lot of music in here. And there were two sisters that were in here that were channelers before that. Some scary things have probably happened in this space!

Ooooh! Before I completely digress and talk about channelers – let’s talk about your New Orleans space. Why did you open that?

Anthony: Well, after getting a little frustrated trying to find the right space here in New York, we started looking all over the place.

Aurora: We love this space, and it’s been really great for us as far as getting our vision out there, but we really wanted an entire house to work with.

Anthony: In New Orleans, it is the full idea. It’s a great challenge, and challenges are fun! We want to create a fully curated space, all the way down to the lightswitches, and provide spaces for people to connect and interact. And in New Orleans, there is a little more heart to it – it feels good to be doing business there. It feels good to be in a place that really needs community building.

How have people been finding out about your spaces? Their allure is that they’re kind of secret and hidden, which is both a bonus and a challenge.

Aurora: Getting press has been really helpful for us, and word of mouth. A lot of people have found their way to us, just by seeing or hearing a little something about us and becoming curious.

Anthony: We do everything by appointment here, because we have to, because we’re in a residential space. But if there’s any advice to give, it’s that we treat every appointment as if it’s the next big opportunity. You don’t know who’s walking in the door or where it will lead, and that’s exciting. We always try to put our best foot forward, no matter who it is. We want them to stay for an hour or two hours, and we want to see if there’s a way in which they can become a part of this.

I think that’s a good note to end the interview on – and we’re really looking forward to collaborating with you! Readers, stay tuned for an announcement very soon about our next event, in collaboration with Fair Folks.

How would you describe your design aesthetic and the way you think about design?

Since I’ve been on my own, and actually when I worked for a firm, I find that my designs are very much dictated by my clients. My clients are very savvy – they have a very strong sense of what they like. If they’re hiring a designer, it’s because design is important to them. The client always dictates the mood.

Which makes sense, because they’re going to be living there!

Of course. And then I put their ideas through my filter, and I help make their ideas more cohesive and functional. If they like this picture, and what it to feel that way, I make that work for them.

Is that what people give you? Pictures from magazines? How do they communicate what they’re feeling?

That’s what I ask them to do. It’s always best to start with pictures. With words, we might be visualizing completely different things, but with a picture we’re on the same page. I think it helps to look at a ton of different pictures and then try to communicate what we like about the pictures.

Could you walk me through working with a client? It starts with bringing pictures to the table. What happens next?

It depends on the scope of the job. I mostly do renovation work. I like to do big projects where we’re really going to change a space. I’ll do decorating jobs here and there, but most of the work I do has been more than that. We’ll figure out how the space needs to function, if there’s a bathroom or kitchen that needs to be updated, or rooms that need to be moved around. Then based on the pictures we’ll do floor plans and pick furniture that meets the mood and the needs.

That’s a nice segue into how I met you – at BKLYN Designs this year. Several of the furniture designers and makers you work with were there.

Right. I do a ton of custom work. I know exactly how I think something should look for my client. Once I get to know them and start to sense their needs and what they like, I find that’s it’s not easy to just go out and buy a pre-existing piece that I think will be right. So 95% of what I buy, I design.

Cool!

I found some really great artisans in Brooklyn – a lot of people that are younger and starting their own businesses, or maybe have been in business for five years. You know some of them – I work a lot with Uhuru and Matthew Fairbank. They are really passionate about their craft, and it’s been great to work with them. I’ll bring them a certain idea, and they’ll bring in their expertise. Those collaborations are one of my favorite parts of what I do.

How did you get into interior design? When did you know it’s what you wanted to do?

When I was in college, I interned at Black Book magazine, and when I graduated I worked there for two years. I kind of floated around there – I started in the art department, I worked in the fashion department… I knew I wanted to do something creative but I wasn’t sure exactly what. Eventually I figured out that publishing wasn’t for me, so I went back to school for interior design. It seemed like a flexible profession, and one where I could either work for a firm, or I could do it smaller on my own. And it was something I could still do if I left New York, whereas for fashion you really need to be here.

Can you describe how you transitioned from working for someone else to deciding to do your own thing? That’s always an exciting part of the story!

I always knew I wanted to start my own business, but I wasn’t expecting to do it so soon. I worked for different designers when I went back to school, but I’d really only been out and working full time for about a year. A friend of a friend called me because she had bought an apartment on the Upper West Side and wanted to gut it. She said, “I’ve met a bunch of interior designers, but they’re all older and they’re completely out of touch with what I want.”

My first reaction was, “I work for a firm and I don’t have time, sorry!” But I ended up just meeting her for coffee, and we got along really well, so I took on the project while I was working. Then I got another client, so I just quit my job! It was a leap of faith, and it’s been good. It’s been almost three years now.

What’s been the hardest part to learn about working for yourself?

The hardest part for me is that I’m not sure how I’m going to get my next client. I’ve worked well and gotten along really well with all my clients, but I never know where they’re going to come from – they come from the most unexpected places. I’m always scared that my projects are going to end and I’m not going to have any more work, but it hasn’t happened yet!

It’s definitely a rollercoaster! Now that you’ve been in this a few years, what advice do you have for creatives that want to strike out on their own?

You need to go into it knowing that it’s not going to be easy. But if your really want to do it, I think you can make it work no matter what. If you stick with it long enough, it will work.

What’s been your proudest moment along the way?

I’ve just started completing some of my bigger projects. I take easily two years to do one job. When you’re working on something that long, having a project wrapped up and photographed is amazing! And seeing my clients satisfied. I know they’re putting a lot of faith in me, and hearing them say that it looks great and they’re really happy is the best feeling.

See more at laurensterndesign.com

Stephan Jaklitsch has been the sole architect for Marc Jacobs International. In the ten years since his firm opened, he’s built an impressive 100+ projects all over the world. He also recently published a monograph with ORO Editions which is receiving great reviews. Stephan’s work is modern yet warm. He is best known from the balanced yet unexpected mix of materials used in his work. http://sjaklitsch.com

When you started your company, what was the transition like from being an employee to being self employed?

In some ways it is not that different. I think everyone has this view of an architect as a single person deciding things. But it’s a team of people working together, working with the client, trying to solve problems.

When you start your own practice, there is also the issue of finding your own voice and taking the time to explore the issues that you yourself are interested in. In that sense, it is very interesting and, for me, it was a good challenge.

What were your early projects like?

My first solo project was for a hedge fund in Manhattan – designing their offices and trading floor. It was a great challenge. The project was located in a neo-gothic townhouse off of Madison Avenue, so the design was very much about respecting the spirit of the existing building.

Some of the other projects were apartment and town house renovations. One of my first fashion projects was a small showroom for Danilo Dolci, which is in my new book. The design had to adapt to three different brands simultaneously, which was a challenge. Shortly after, we were asked to work on our first Marc Jacobs store.

Oh, so right from the beginning of your career you have been involved with very high end designers like Marc Jacobs?

We started doing Robert Duffy’s apartment in June of 1999 and then by the fall of that year we began working on the San Francisco store.

And how did you get to this point? Were you with a team of people or was it just you as a sole proprietor?

In the beginning it was just me, working out of my studio apartment. Within a year, we grew to three people – all working out of my studio. We moved to our current office on 27th Street in February of 2000. I remember it being a very liberating thing to finally have that separation. We started out with just two little offices on the 9th floor. As the business grew, we started taking over more and more of the floor. About a year ago we took over the entire floor.

That’s great! Do you feel that there is a connection between your design work and that of Robert Duffy and Marc Jacobs? There has to be an interesting relationship between the architect and the client when the client is also a designer. I would imagine you have to be very in tune with their design sense, would you say that’s true?

Yes and no, it’s not really an easy, one-to-one thing. There are things about Marc Jacobs clothing that make them special – things that maybe only the person wearing the clothes would know. Like a simple thermal T-shirt made out of cashmere. They take ordinary things and transform them, using refined materials or tailoring to make them special.

Marc and Robert didn’t even have a sign on their offices, and the sign on their first few stores were only about two inches high – which is still true of New York’s Bleecker & Mercer Street stores and the San Francisco store. So, their aesthetic was very quiet, and subdued. I think, if you look at our work, you first see one broad stroke, and then as you look more and more into the details you begin to see the complexity in the work. And in that spirit there is definitely a connection.

And, why do you consider the details and texture to be so important to your work?

I think architecture has to work at the large scale, the medium scale, and the foreground. It has to work from across the city, as well as being up close. I think the closer you get, the more information you may begin to process. For each project, we always try to play with details and explore different materials and textures. But there is always a thematic core that runs through each of our projects, which connects the materials we choose.

Is there a specific approach that your firm takes to design?

Well, it’s one approach for a residential project and another for a commercial project. Though, there is a certain theatricality that links the two. For a commercial project, I ask the client what they want the customer to really experience as they cross the threshold. Do they want surprise? There’s a sort of psychological component to it. Do they want calm or do they want excitement? It changes for each brand and client. From that conversation, a certain mood that is set, and then we go onto manipulating lighting, scale, proportion and materiality to reflect what the client is looking for.

Speaking of scale, you have recently been expanding into product design as well as urban scaled projects. How is that going?

How IS that going? It is definitely a process! We are currently developing some houseware products. We are exploring a number of different themes; some of them are directly related to structures we find in nature. That’s really about all I can say about it right now, it is still very much in progress.

We’re always open to doing other things though. I was trained as an architect and there has always been this sort of dichotomy between interior architecture and architecture, which I view as false. I am sort of surprised by the profession actually, and how they view that division. But, being trained as an architect makes you believe that you should be able to design anything from a soup spoon to a city. It’s a natural sort of progression. Most architects get smaller projects early on and as they mature and gain more responsibility the clients become more willing to trust them.

There is always this problem, I think, with clients who think you can only do a project if you’ve done one before. We’ve worked with clients who have asked us to do things because they like to work with us and they respect our attitude, even though we may not have done that project type before. We actually just finished our first restaurant in Milan which is a new typology for us. I had never done a retail store before working with Marc Jacobs and I had never done a trading floor before working on the hedge fund’s office.

No better way to get experience than to dive right in!

Well, there is a passion that you should invest in what you’re doing. As long as you’re willing to learn and you’re willing to put a certain amount of energy into it, I think that a smart client recognizes that they are probably going to get a better project as a result of you putting in that extra effort.

What advice do you give to young architects today that are looking to dive in and start their own firm?

Well, it’s really not a bad time. Actually, a downturn can be a really great time to start, if your overhead is low and you’re willing to take risk. It can be a great time because you’ll grow as the market recovers. It takes time for people to know what you’re doing, where and how to seek you out, and help you realize a project. But, I think it’s also a matter of remaining true to what you really believe in. We take an academic approach and we treat design very seriously. We have never lost that. That’s what we do, and I don’t think that will ever change here.

See more at http://sjaklitsch.com

How you got involved with designing pop-up shops?

Well, let’s see. My partners, Jesse Warren and Josh warren, are cousins. I grew up with Josh. Last summer he called me saying, “My cousin’s opening up a store in Southampton, he needs help with the build-out and designing the interior.” It was very last-minute. I went out there over a long weekend and threw it together. We put in racks and hung a huge beam in the middle of the store to drop lights down from. We lucked out finding furniture – a couple stores in Williamsburg were going out of business, so we got lighting, racks, and mirrors from them.

The biggest thing I did was the dressing room. It looked like a Saharan tent made out of canvas drop cloth and 2×4s – which ended up being a total fire hazard. The first weekend that I built it, the fire marshall came in and said, “Not a chance, you guys have to change this.” It was a big learning experience. I ended up being able to just change the structure a little bit and keep the aesthetic.

T.B.D. pop-up boutique in the Hamptons

From there, how did you end up in Aspen?

My involvement in the first store was just on the front end – designing and building out the space, and I did it for free. I figured I’d put it in my portfolio and that would be it. But it ended up being a hugely successful season for Jesse, and when it came time to do another store, they brought me on as a partner. Originally I wasn’t planning on moving out here. Then 2 weeks before the trip I thought, you know what, my job is flexible, I can sublet my apartment, and I’m going to Aspen for the season!

How long have you been out there now?

I came out December 9th – we opened December 18th.

Whoa, that’s really fast.

Yeah, the build-out was intense. The craziest thing is that the first two weeks of our business were the busiest weeks of the season. We had to figure everything out so fast. We didn’t get our credit card machine until the day we opened.

How was it different planning a design and build out that was going to be in Colorado?

Here’s where it gets interesting. I had maybe a month’s notice that we were going to try to do this store. A week before we were supposed to leave New York, we still didn’t know if it was definite because we hadn’t signed the lease yet. My partners Josh and Jesse came out here, checked out the spaces, and locked in an incredible storefront right in the heart of Aspen. It’s across the street from Prada. It’s next to Dior and Gucci. The Ralph Lauren store on the corner is the company’s second-most profitable store location.

So you’re in good company.

We’re the small fish in a big pond. But we decided that if we were going to do this, we had to just go balls out and get the best spot possible.

Most businesses do pop-up shops as a marketing thing. Whereas our model is, wait until the last minute and get a lease in the best spot possible for the cheapest amount. That’s why everything had to be so last-minute – it’s all about negotiating a lease, in order for us to be profitable.

That makes a lot of sense, especially right now. There’s probably a lot of storefronts sitting empty since the economy’s so bad.

Exactly. There’s quite a few in Aspen and it’s a shame. But because of all this, I didn’t have the green light on this project until a week before we left New York. I rented a U-Haul in Bed-Sty and spent 2 or 3 days going around Brooklyn picking up things for the store. I cleaned out my studio in DUMBO, pulled a bunch of stuff from my apartment, and went to Build It Green in Astoria and bought some stuff there.

Before and after shots of the store space

Could you give me an idea of what kind of a budget you had for the store design?

I had pretty much no budget, because we had to pay for our entire lease upfront. We were running really low on capital in the beginning. The only place that we actually spent money was at Build It Green, where we bought the flooring, a couple chairs, some odds’n'ends. Then we drove the U-Haul to New Jersey, where our partner Mikey had just come up from Florida with his dual-H pickup truck and 30-ft horse trailer, which we loaded all of the stuff into.

That sounds like the world’s worst thing to drive across country in.

Oh my god, it was a nightmare. We had vehicle problems the entire way across country. Flat tires left and right. We didn’t even make it through Pennsylvania before we had to stop and get a fuel filter and all these things for his truck. Then we got stuck in Kansas because we didn’t have snow tires. We finally got here, and we arrived at like 3 in the morning, and it was -5 degrees out, and we had to unload this entire trailer into the store.

For the next week, we lived and slept in the store, trying to build it out. The first thing we had to do was lay the floor – there was this terrible carpet when we got here. There was horrible paneling on the walls which we ripped off. We had 6 guys out here at the time, and I had to keep everyone busy and make sure they were doing good work. The build-out went as smoothly as something like that could go. But in all honesty, the store is just now looking the way that I wanted it to.

There’s so many things to do here, and in the beginning it was just us, the owners, running it. Buying, selling retail, working the floor, crazy hours, all night long. We worked our asses off for a month and a half before we were able to take a breath. Now we have two full-time employees, which lightens the load considerably.

Now that you’ve gone through that whole process, what’s been the hardest thing to learn about running a successful store?

Honestly, there’s not enough time in the day to do everything that needs to get done. It’s just prioritizing. For me, the hardest thing was making sacrifices. Visually, things weren’t up to my standard of what I’d like them to look like, but there were other things that needed to be done for the business first.

This store has been the biggest learning experience for me. I was never really interested in designing stores or spaces before, and now I feel like I can make a living out of this. I feel like I just got a mini-MBA. I now know how to run a business, which is really cool. But I’m lucky, because Josh and Jesse both have finance backgrounds and business degrees. I could never do it without them.

Now that you’ve sort of gone through this crash-course in the business, do you think you’ll approach your own work differently?

That’s a great question – I’ve been thinking about that so much. I’ve always been so into furniture, and products, and jewelry, but now I fell into other this thing which could be a great opportunity for me to continue doing store design. I’m not sure where I’m going to be 2 months from now. I think we’re going to do a summer store in Southampton again, and we’re talking to someone about possibly opening down in Dallas. We’ll see!

The Breslin Bar and Restaurant

We’re always really interested in when people take the jump from being employed to being self-employed. When did that happen for you two?

Robin: Neither of us had a conventional job for years as we were working freelance in film. We met working as production designers.

Which is project to project.

Right. It is essentially being self employed so the leap to our own company was a pretty natural transition. And we have always been more interested in finding creative challenges than in any traditional notion of job security.

How did you get into the film world?

I was painting and working in an art gallery after college and Stephen was working in an architecture firm. We didn’t know each other then but we both entered the film business through somewhat different avenues. Because of my background, I was hired by Martin Scorsese as visual consultant on The Age of Innocence and Stephen was hired because of his drawing skills to work as a draftsman. We met a few years and few films later.

Film is a wonderful venue for people interested in design. There are many different kinds of opportunities, and you get to do a lot of different kinds of projects. Film is also very fast paced. I think people would be surprised by how incredibly rigorous it is. The schedules, the budgets, the demands are really extraordinary. Not to mention the fact that the camera is a very discerning eye from which flaws and inconsistencies cannot hide. In film, we were able to experiment with a variety of spaces that have really helped hone our skills.

211 Elizabeth Street: Interior

How did that lead you to architecture?

Stephen was an architect before working in the film industry and his passion for architecture has been forever present, even in our film work. I always had a devotion and deep interest in space and design that finally found its outlet.

We worked in film for several years and did a lot of amazing projects. But we always wanted to get back to a place of permanence in our work, back to building things that were not temporary and made purely to be seen on screen. In film, you build these amazing things and then they are torn down. As designers, Stephen and I are very devoted to a deep sense of materiality, craft and detailing. Our work is never thin in the way people think of sets. And it was hard, after time, to watch the designs being dismantled after filming.

Right. And for sets you’re usually faking the materiality, right?

On many sets that’s the case, but we never worked that way. This is an interesting paradox. We had a reputation for designing sets that were solid and real. Some of the actors and directors who saw and worked on the sets were taken by how well they were built and how convincing they were. At one point we were working with Ben Stiller who said, “Work on my house, because this set looks better than my house.” That is, in a nutshell, how we made the transition to our own architecture and design firm.

Stephen and I have always been interested in making things, large and small. We’re married, and we came together, in part, because that’s a big tenet in both of our lives. We wanted to create our own world – including our own business which was about building and making and creating all sorts of environments and objects.

211 Elizabeth Street: Interior

What were your first projects as Roman & Williams?

Initially, we designed furniture and small residences and then were hired to do a large residential project for Ben Stiller. Ben just believed in our ability from having seen our work in, as we had done several films together and he knew we were building a design firm. This project led to some other high profile residential work.

Our goal was always to come back to New York permanently, which we did in 2003. We opened this office in 2003 and pretty quickly met Andre Balazs and starting working on the New York Standard. Ace Hotels followed, as well as our client for 211 Elizabeth Street – our first ground up building – so we had the opportunity to develop our commercial practice while we continued to design residences.

How do the different types of design you’ve done inform each other?

We’ve found that designing hotels takes us back, almost full-circle, to our film work. There is something very theatrical about designing hotels. We’re creating spaces where people will eat and party and it is fascinating to see how people interact with the space.

There is a narrative element to all of our work that also takes us back to film. We really spend a lot of time thinking about who will use the space and how, which is exactly what we did with the characters in our films.

It’s great to be in a space we designed and see where people gravitate and want to sit. Our hotel work is definitely affected by our residential work. We make hotels that are comfortable, and sort of groovy – never generic. I never was that interested in staying in a Hilton. It just never felt personal enough.

And, though I mentioned the theatrical element, it is important to distinguish between design that is very theatrical and a theatrical way of thinking about design. We don’t respond to spaces that feel too theatrical or hyper-designed.

Ace Hotel: Room

Yes, sometimes that feels very forced, like this is “Design” with a capitol D.

Exactly! It’s important to define that. You have a design blog, we have a design firm, but Stephen and I often say we don’t like design. Not everyone understands what we mean when we say that. We don’t like when design is forced, or it’s fussy, or it feels precious. A residential building or an interior is not necessarily meant to be like a piece of avant-garde art. It’s in a neighborhood and people are living in it. There are ways to show your interest in design through materials, details and careful craftsmanship, versus any overarching concept that eclipses its humanity.

How would you describe your approach to architecture?

In some ways, inventing some brand new shape that no one has seen before is not that difficult. We have very active imaginations too. But we’re much more interested in creating something that is original but that somehow has cues that people recognize, that make them feel comfortable. Our ideas always begin with an amalgam of things that we understand from the world around us. We all have references and memories. If you refer to those things that occupy your memory, and then develop and advance them, we think it makes for a very interesting experience.

211 Elizabeth Street is a good example. It has a certain modesty in terms of its design approach. It is a hand-laid brick building with traditional details and when we started people said “It’s an historical building.” But now that it is finished, people understand that we didn’t copy anything, that we combined a lot of different ideas to create something new, but something that looks like it might have been there forever. Now the feedback we get is that it is a very human building that feels at ease in the neighborhood and that makes people feel comfortable. We don’t think anyone really wants to live in a sculpture.

211 Elizabeth Street: Rendering

Speaking of history and tradition – Stephen does all of your presentation renderings by hand, right?

Yes, Stephen draws, and beautifully. The entire set of construction drawings for Kate Hudson’s house was hand drafted. That is really unheard of today. It’s this beautiful relic that I keep in the drawer.

Stephen calls himself Rip Van Winkle because so few people still hand draw. Our big document sets have to be in CAD. There’s just no other way to sustain the business – there aren’t enough people who draw, and you can’t move fast enough. But for presentations it’s incredible to be able to use hand drawings. Stephen also designs as he draws and draws as he designs. The process is one for him so he is working out design problems as he’s drawing. We have always worked together using drawing as our starting point.

It has an emotional aspect to it.

Precisely. It is so engaging, even mesmerizing. I mean that in a very practical way. But, that wasn’t the goal – he just loves to draw and that is how we express ideas. And that is how we’ve always run our business. We started as a little mom and pop shop, the two of us in the living room. Seeing that reaction was one of the things that told us, “We might make this work.” And then we rented this office on Lafayette Street, with $4 left in the bank.

Fast forward to today, and you’re being called one of the year’s hottest design teams. How does that feel?

Of course, it is great to be recognized, to have the work appreciated. But there is an aspect of what we do that is becoming trendy now, and I’m a bit unhappy about that. There’s a big Victoriana thing happening right now and we don’t want to get lumped in with anything that feels theme driven. We don’t believe our way of thinking about design is trendy. It’s about what we feel is important to put on the planet, and what we want to do with our lives. We’re interested in developing a lasting structure within which our ideas can evolve. So we’re happy about the press and we’re happy about the interest, but I’d like it to continue past the moment.

211 Elizabeth Street

I’m really curious to find out your story, because you’ve transitioned your creative work into a career so well.

I always get asked, “How did you end up where you are?” Looking back, I literally have no idea. I originally went to NYU and studied journalism. I didn’t really enjoy the school, so after 2 years I switched to William & Mary in Virginia, where I’m from. I ended up majoring in fine art. While what I’m doing now combines those two things in a really perfect way, when I graduated from college I felt completely lost. I felt like, “I have a degree I don’t know what to do with, I don’t have four full years of anything, what am I doing?”

So what did you decide to do?

I turned to my other passion in college, which was being a radio DJ. I thought, “I’m going to go into the music business. That’s what I’m interested in.” So I moved to New York the day after I graduated and worked for a record label. It was a giant disaster – not at all what I thought it was going to be.

6 months after moving to the city, I found myself looking for a new job. I wanted to do something in the arts, but I knew that I wasn’t ever going to make money on my own art. My strength was in my eye, but how do you make a living off of that?

I realized that I loved being around creative people. That’s always been my favorite thing – it’s why I went to NYU. So I tried a bunch of jobs, ended up at a super tiny PR firm in Brooklyn, and was there for two years. It was the perfect job because I got to meet a lot of really fantastic designers. We worked with Vitra. I got to meet the Bourellec brothers and Zaha Hadid – super cool people that I was just in awe to even be talking to.

The Design*Sponge site.

That’s amazing!

Also, part of my job was to deal with magazine editors. I’d always idolized magazine editors as a kid. I thought, “That’s it – that’s what I want to do. I want to go work for a magazine.” So that was my goal, but how on earth would I get to be a magazine editor? My boyfriend at the time said, “Why don’t you start a blog? It could be a fun way for you to discover your voice and build up a portfolio.”

When was that?

It was August of 2004. I spent probably 2 weeks just playing around with super basic stuff like, “How do you upload a picture?” and not publishing anything. Once I discovered the blog world, I wondered if there was anyone else who was into furniture and design. I looked around and found MoCoLoco and Apartment Therapy and DesignBoom. They were the only sites talking about that sort of stuff, and it wasn’t quite my aesthetic. So I decided to just write about things I like. I’d literally just put a picture up and say “This chair is cool!” And that was it.

Obviously Design*Sponge has come a long way since then! When did you really gain a following?

As I was writing and talking about things that I loved, I was covering Brooklyn design, which was literally just about to break and be a big deal. Sort of right place, right time, right content. I think a lot of people were looking for young, cool things. There were other design websites, but they were a lot more sophisticated and high-end.

The biggest turning point was probably when the New York Times did a big story on design bloggers. They picked up Maxwell and Harry and I. They put me on the front page of the Home section, which obviously was a huge deal. It brought a huge amount of traffic to the site. That was probably 6 months after I started. I had no mission, no goal, I was just sort of talking – and then I got thrown into a place where I had a lot of people reading.

Design*Sponge DIY project: Miniature helper tins.

You were still working in PR, right?

Yeah, I left in 2006.

So that was when you started doing your blog full time?

Pretty much. 2006 was the other big turning point. This weird thing happened where the magazines I’d always wanted to work for ended up coming to me! House & Garden came and said, “We’re an older magazine, and we want to connect to somebody younger. Will you come help work on our website?”

They offered me a full-time freelance position. I was able to leave the PR job, do work for them from home, and run my site at the same time. I helped them re-plan and re-design their website, and wrote a bunch of daily content for it. I did that for 2 years and absolutely loved it. It was so cool to have one foot in that world and one foot in the blog world. When House & Garden closed, I moved to Domino. Then Domino closed! So it’s been full-time Design*Sponge for the last year and a half.

I guess that whole world has moved online.

Yeah, it really has. There’s this bank of very talented writers, style directors, and stylists who have no jobs. There’s basically nowhere for them to go other than online, which is such a different world. I feel really fortunate to have learned my way up from both places. I’m not really firmly entrenched in one or the other.

Design*Sponge’s guide to Office Accessories.

Over time you have obviously found your voice. How would you describe what Design*Sponge is about now?

I’m writing a book now for Design*Sponge, and I have to sum up what we’re about in a sentence or two. I’m having a really hard time doing it. The site tends to move and change completely based on whims. I added a food column because I was obsessed with cooking and thought, “Maybe somebody else is too.” As we’ve learned and grown, we’ve just added stuff. That’s the great part about the web. You can literally come up with any idea and two hours later, have it online. It’s been so fun to test things out and see how people respond.

I want the blog to feel like a friend you have, who happens to know a lot about one particular subject, and talks about cool things. The staff and I really enjoy the work we do because it’s entirely based upon what we’re interested in. If I’m not interested in a topic I’m not going to cover it. I know everybody wants Top Ten Lists and everything under $25, but I don’t want to put anything out there that I’m not personally interested in.

Who are your readers?

We have a pretty niche audience. It’s almost all girls, between the ages of 25 and 35. Most live in big cities. So We’re sort of writing to ourselves, which I love. As I get older, so does the audience. I feel like as our tastes change and grow up a bit, so do theirs – it’s this nice, natural progression.

What is your team like, these days?

I have ten editors now, which blows my mind! I fought tooth and nail against that for the first four years. I didn’t want to have to worry about telling someone, “I don’t like the way you write.” That’s a sensitive thing.

As I went along, I ended up hiring an intern, who was my age. It just didn’t feel right having her as an intern, so she became my first editor. That’s Anne, who runs all the home tours. Then I just turned to the people who I’m friends with. I thought, “Hey, you’re really good at this one thing. Rather than me trying to pretend I’m an expert in that field, why not bring in the person who actually is?”

Design*Sponge’s guide to fresh fig mini-pies.

It still feels like it has a very coherent voice.

We’ve grown in such a way that it still feels small, because only three of us are in the same city. I never see anybody – they email me a post once a week. If we had an office and we were all together I think it would feel really weird and big. We’re all still sort of doing everything on a shoestring, and that’s how I prefer it.

Can you tell me a little about the book that you’re working on? When can we expect to see it?

Assuming I can meet my insane deadline, it’s going to come out next fall/holiday. It’s going to be a 400+ page hardback book with Artisan, which is my favorite publisher. We’ve been talking with publishers since like 2005. They’ve been wanting us to do books, which is flattering, but they sort of want to push you into a really narrow topic.

This is going to be a huge selection of our favorite home tours, DIY projects, and before-and-afters from the last five years, combined with new homes, new projects, new before-and-afters. There will also be some really great basic how-tos, details for hacking IKEA furniture, floral arrangements inspired by rooms and based on budgets, design history, and a design glossary.

I want it to be THE book that people will go to right now for inspiration and actual practical advice. Sort of like where the Domino book left off. I love it and it’s the only book I actually use these days, but it just doesn’t have enough in it for me. Plus I’d like it to be a bit more budget-conscious. So I thought, “I’m just going to have to do it myself.” I have two-and-a-half months to pull it all together.

Design*Sponge DIY project: Wallpaper file cabinet.

That’s crazy! Best of luck on pulling it all off, that sounds like an amazing project.

Thanks!

What was the hardest part of getting to where you are now?

Figuring out what I was good at. It was a hard realization to face the fact that I wasn’t actually an artist. I’m not a great artist. I happen to have a degree in it, but it’s not really what my strengths are. I think you just have to keep trying lots of things. Work two jobs at once. Take an internship on the weekends. I did all those things. I tried so many different jobs before I figured out what I wanted to do. So try it, and don’t be afraid.

What advice do you have for people who want to take their own passions and turn it into their career?

I think the key is to not listen to the people who tell you that it’s impractical. People will say you should go for a standard 9-to-5 with health insurance. You can get your health insurance other ways! Especially in an economy like this, everyone says, “No, stick with the safe thing, you’re crazy to follow what you enjoy.” But I think this is the best time to do it. I think this is the time when people are forced to realize, “I have to have a job no matter what – I might as well enjoy what I’m doing.”

Screenshot:

We may have been late to the party, but we’re making up for it by bringing you an interview with the founders, Serap Demirag and Deger Cengiz, about how they started and their vision for the space.

You’ve got a great group of designers in here. How did you go about finding the people you wanted to work with?

We researched and came up with 35 different designers. Then we called them one by and one, and visited their studios. I’ll be honest with you, when I first came up with the idea, I though the designers would have huge egos and rock star personalities – but every time we left a studio, we’d be overwhelmed by how nice they were.

What made you decide to open a furniture store?

I saw this beautiful table by Palo Samko at the Architectural Digest show. I was so drawn to it. Then I realized he was a Brooklyn designer – I didn’t even know Brooklyn had a design scene! That started everything.

I started looking into it, going to BKLYN Designs, and realized how much much talent is here. And I realized how much beautiful furniture there is that’s not being showcased. I wanted to open a store in Williamsburg to show it. I’d already been in the home furnishings field for 15 years. I loved furniture, I knew about it. I realized opening a store was too much work for one person, so I asked my friend Deger if he wanted to be partners. He jumped right in, and we started doing it together.

[image via Apartment Therapy]

I found the space last March. It was still under construction, so there was some time for us to prepare. Initially I was going to open in October, but it was postponed, which was good because that was the worst time in the economy.

Why weren’t these great pieces already represented in showrooms?

Since the work is made locally, out of beautiful materials, it makes the pieces very expensive. It’s expensive for the designer to even sell to customers directly. And normal showrooms need to mark up the prices two or two-and-a-half times to be able to make money and take the risk of buying a piece of furniture. With that kind of markup, these pieces become so expensive they are unsellable.

[image via Apartment Therapy]

So how have you gotten around that problem at VOOS?

We came up with the idea of making this more like an art gallery. We take a small commission, and sell the pieces at their list prices. Then we approached designers with the idea, and they loved it. We asked each designer to show us what they already had in stock, and picked from those pieces for our initial opening inventory.

Moving forwards, we are going to switch out the pieces in the space every two months or so, to showcase more of their work. The idea is to sell a designer’s pieces off the floor, to give them the means to make something new.

Also, since all the designers are local, they can customize their pieces. If a customer comes in here and wants a coffee table longer or shorter, or in a different material, it’s possible. We’re the place for those kinds of things. Anyone can come here, talk to us about what they’d like, and we can help them work with the designers to get exactly what they want.

[image via Apartment Therapy]

I love the concept. You’re not just a store – you’re also a community resource.

People like to know about the designers. We can tell you how Takeshi works right down the block. Every piece has it’s story, and we know it because we are friends with the designers. People like that. It makes it all much more personal.

Now I feel this pressure – we really need to make it for the designers we represent. Some of them are expecting babies. Some just became dads, others are having another child. They’re real people.

How do you want VOOS to grow?

We need to become a destination for interior designers and architects. What I didn’t realize was going to be so difficult, is bringing the Manhattanites into Brooklyn. Our real clientele, who is going to buy the $9,000 table, usually uses an interior designer. That’s why we need to get them to know about us.

People are starting to hear our name though, and once it really sticks in their mind it will be easier. You can see these are very beautiful, solid pieces. They are not just a fun design. We passionately love the work that is made here.

[image via The Architect's Newspaper]

Fruit Cocktail Collection by Flavor Paper

How did Flavor Paper start?

I was based out of New Orleans, working for a real estate company out of Baltimore, doing projects mostly in Florida. I was working on a couple of apartments in Miami, and had decided to hang on to one of them for a while. We were going to do it up and see what we could get for that, versus a plain box.

I was working on it when a friend of mine came over to give me some ideas for decor. She was standing in the kitchen, trying to get wallpaper from a company in Oregon. The guy called her back and said they were going out of business and burning all their equipment. I thought it was cool wallpaper so I called the guy up, who said he was literally dragging all the equipment outside and burning it. He told me if I wanted anything I had 24 hours to make up my mind, and 48 hours to get the machinery out of there.

Next thing I knew I had a truck full of wallpaper equipment, and was headed to New Orleans with no place to put it. I went online and found a building. When I got back to New Orleans, I checked it out, got it under contracts, moved my stuff in, and started figuring out how to make wallpaper. Since then we’ve had a flood, a fire, a train wreck, a hurricane and we’re still trying to go strong. Still making wallpaper. It’s pretty exciting to say the least.

Flower Pedal by Flavor Paper

Wow. That’s intense. When did you finally get your first line out?

We released our first line at ICFF 2004, and got lucky. Our first client was Lenny Kravitz’ house in New Orleans. From there it kind of just kept going. We weren’t really ready for it because we’d just had a fire that ruined most of our equipment, and were still on the rebound. We got it together pretty quickly and have been learning ever since.

Right now is our first time ever designing a space, knowing what we’re doing, and building it specifically for making wallpaper.

Let’s talk about this space. There’s a buzz this year about whether you’re Brooklyn-based or not. What made you decide to move your manufacturing, studios, and showroom to NY?

We probably do about 90% of our business here. Even if we have a job in Hong Kong, it’s probably sourced in New York. So we’ve always been thinking about getting up here but couldn’t really figure out a way to pull it off. After Katrina we started investigating our options and this was our number one choice. All of our paper suppliers are in Queens or New Jersey. Instead of making a huge carbon footprint by shipping our papers to New Orleans, back here, and then off to other places – it just made more sense to be here.

I looked at almost 300 buildings, over a year and a half, before picking one. We have such a unique beast because we have a 50-ft table we have to fit in wherever we are.

The 50-ft table.

So are you personally going to be moving out here?

I’ll be spending 70% of my time here and 30% in New Orleans. Instead of closing the New Orleans location, we’re turning it into a fabric-printing space. Really we’re expanding rather then moving. We’re trying to bring ourselves into more of what we always wanted to be.

What has been the hardest thing you had to learn about the wallpaper business?

Figuring out how to get a 50-ft long table to be perfectly straight is about the hardest thing you could ever do. Lasers don’t do it. We got this 35-yr old table, that had been moved several times already. We strapped a bunch of plywood to it, lifted it up with a log lifter, and moved it in one piece. We had it hanging off a trailer bouncing down a mountain road. It was definitely out of wack when we got it to New Orleans.

Getting something like that straight is incredibly difficult. If it’s not straight, we’re not printing right, and the paper doesn’t line up. Unfortunately, we then learned that our space is right next to train tracks, and off the Mississippi river bed. The table goes off-kilter by up to an inch when it rains.

City Park by Flavor Paper

Whoa. How did you find that out?

Our manufacturing process is – we take designs from hand-drawn artwork, print a digital film, and use that to burn a screen. There are all these different points where things can go wrong. We couldn’t get anyone to print our film straight, so we bought a digital printer to do it ourselves. That’s when I realized how much our building moved. One day it would print perfectly straight, then two days later, it would be way off.

How big are your screens?

About thirty-six inches wide, by seven feet tall.

So I assume it takes more then one person to print?

Two people are printing at all times. But now we’re designing this custom one-armed counterweight. One person pulls, and the counterweight helps keep it straight and more even. Some variation is to be expected in handprinting, but we’re pretty anal about keeping things as tight as we can. This way only one person has to pull, and the paper still has that handprinted quality.

Nouveau Riche by Flavor Paper

Have you found that you’ve had to educate people about using wallpaper?

Absolutely. The biggest thing that people don’t understand is how to size and hang it. They know if they like the aesthetic or not. That’s why I decided to take the wallpaper company. I didn’t know a single person with wallpaper, but I figured it’s been around for thousands of years – no one had it, so there had to be a market for cool paper.

Some of the original patterns from the company I bought were great, but the colors we’re absurdly dated. Our first line was seven of their patterns, which we changed the colors on. Flower of Love, Cycloid, Highway 66, Sheeba, and Vapour – all of those were originals.

Are there new patterns coming out for Design Week?

We have seven new patterns coming out – crazy stuff. Four designed by Dan Funderburgh. He’s Brooklyn based, and we’ve worked with him in the past. Famer’s Market uses artichokes, wheat leaves, and other vegetables that form vertical stripes. Fruits of Design is a Damask but with fractals, compasses and paintbrushes thrown in. Not Wood is a diagonal running woodgrain pattern. Power Plant has power cords that turn into light bulbs, and finally, Sharp Descent, has pretty much every sharp thing you could think of raining from the sky.