Meet Joe and Josephine!
I’ve been thinking about anatomy lately. Partly because I’ve been going to the gym where I can’t help but observe ( I swear I’m not staring) other’s physiques and where I marvel at the various torture devices, a.k.a fitness equipment, designed to help us develop our bodies into lean, mean, fighting machines a la Georges St-Pierre. Well, maybe not GSP, especially if you’re a woman, but it’s good to have goals.
Mostly though I’ve been thinking about anatomy in terms of design. Every object and tool, every piece of furniture, every space that we occupy, the clothing we wear (unless it’s bespoke) is based on commonalities of our human bodies, or should be. We’ve all experienced tools, interior spaces, furniture, clothing that miss the mark in terms of ease of use, comfort, fit etc. Doesn’t it make you wonder sometimes if humans designed these things? It seems to me that the designs that are the most successful are the ones that really consider our anatomies and how we interact with the world around us.
So who are Joe and Josephine?
This thinking about anatomy and design reminded me of a couple of great vintage books I have on the subject so I thought I’d share them with you.
The first one is called “The Measure of Man, Human Factors in Design” by Henry Dreyfuss, published in 1959 . Thankfully there is now “The Measure of Man and Woman” which sadly wasn’t published until 1993, thirty-four years after the original. The 1959 edition includes Joe and Josephine, two life size figure charts (“suitable for mounting” states the cover) that depict all the various measurements of the “Joe” average man and woman. Apparently, though, according to the diagram, men didn’t have nether regions (surely a factor?) in 1959. Hmm… Let us be thankful, at least, there is no fig leaf. Data derived from J and J was used in developing all of Dreyfuss’s wide-ranging product design.
So who was Henry Dreyfuss?
Henry Dreyfuss (1904-1972) was another pioneering American industrial design genius. He was similar to Raymond Loewy (who I talked about in my last post) in his remarkable scope, creativity and output. He designed everything from the Honeywell thermostat (there’s still one in the house I grew up in) to the ubiquitous Model 500 telephone to John Deere tractors. Dreyfuss was far less flamboyant than Loewy.The man wore the same sober brown suit everyday (business-like yet friendly) and by all accounts was a workaholic long before that designation came into use. The end of his life was rather tragic but resolute (click here if you’re curious). So much design that still surrounds us today is thanks to the man in the brown suit.
Another quirkier but no less informative book I have on the subject is called ” Anatomy for Interior Designers, plus: How to Talk to a Client” written by Francis de N. Schroeder in 1954 (second edition). The rather odd(oh the 50s!) dust jacket illustration was done by the renowned designer, Alvin Lustig. To give you an idea of the tone of this book here is the opening paragraph of the Introduction:
The proportions of the human body are generally attractive to most of us, which accounts for the continuing popularity of burlesque shows, prize fights, acrobats, classical sculpture and the more expensive bathing beaches, but from an engineering point of view the human body is a rather imperfect machine. It cannot exist when the skin temperature varies more than six or seven degrees. It cannot hibernate, and it cannot regularly fly south for the winter, - except in the case of retired millionaires and gangsters. For this reason the human mind was forced to invent two protective devices: clothing and architecture, and, with the architecture, designed to protect the even temperature of the body, the human mind had to invent something else-furniture.
Fun-no? The writing is cheeky but the info and advice is sound and still relevant almost sixty years later. The drawings are wacky (mostly of noodley naked people) as you can see in the example above. They really do illustrate, though, the problems and solutions encountered when planning interior spaces, both residential and commercial, for we hominids.
Here is a nice succinct quote form Dreyfuss that really encapsulates it all:
“If people are made safer, more comfortable, more eager to purchase, more efficient, or just happier, the designer has succeeded.”
OK, off to the gym, right after I pick up my brown suit at the cleaners.
Home Office: Makeover Complete!
Here are the final pics of my office makeover.
Like most projects, it took a bit longer to complete than I initially thought it would but I’m so happy I did it. It’s a room I enjoy coming in to everyday. As one of my decorating heroes of days gone by, Dorothy Draper, said, “decorating is fun!”. Actually she wrote an entire book by that name and it’s astoundingly relevant today for something that was written in 1939. Good design principles never go out of style. Decorating is fun. It is also challenging, eye-opening, timely, useful and, I believe, worth it.
There are two things that I think decorating should encompass (and I believe Ms. Draper would agree): function and personality. As she says in her book, “Your home is the backdrop of your life, whether it is a palace or a one-room apartment. It should be honestly your own-an expression of your personality. So many people stick timidly to the often uninspired conventional ideas or follow some expert’s methods slavishly. Either way they are more or less living in someone else’s house.”
I agree and I digress. Back to the office! Here is a breakdown of some of the things I did to make it both function better and reflect my personality:
* Painted the walls grey and added an accent wall in red. I also tried magnetic primer for the first time on the wall next to my sewing/drawing table. It’s pretty great stuff. It has actual metal fillings in it and takes an eternity to stir (have them shake the can at the paint store for you if you do ever use it). The primer is black and then you simply paint over it with regular wall paint. It does leave a bit of a texture. Rare-earth magnets are the best kind to use on this type of wall-they’re super strong and inconspicuous.
* Tore out the cheap laminate and baseboards, repaired the floor, replaced the baseboards and painted it all the same white. Trimmed out the door.
* De-cluttered the shelves. It’s a small room and I was expecting it to function on a lot of levels. It wasn’t quite up to the challenge so I found other places in the house to store my fabrics ( I am a fabric junkie) and books (ditto on the junkie thing). I really believe it’s important to have items to hand but it’s not always necessary to have them in your immediate purview all the time. The fabric is now in clear plastic shelving units in the mercifully un-damp basement and the books have been moved to the room next to my office which is in the process of becoming a book room/second office.
* Moved the bookcases around and added two display shelves above the bookcase that my dad built. This was in my house growing up and had a kind of “antiqued” olive green paint finish. Ahhh, the 70s… I repainted it in the same white as the floor and baseboards.
* Replaced the cool vintage but annoyingly unsteady sewing table with a more practical, stable one that folds out to three times it’s size. I’m aware of the fact that there is a preponderance of Ikea products in this room. Not exactly stunningly original, I know! Sometimes you just need something decent but inexpensive that fulfills a need and Ikea often fits the bill. Besides, what would Craigslist and Value Village do without Ikea?
* Painted the frames of bulletin boards and covered the cork with Japanese paper. And then covered them with tons of images and do-dads. I swear, they did not start out all colour co-ordinated. They just sort of evolved that way.
*Painted the orangey wooden casings of the stereo speakers white and spray painted the fabric covers with primer to tone them down.
* Made a Roman blind for the window with an Ikat-type patterned fabric and made a seat cushion from a classic gingham seersucker fabric.
* Framed envelopes of vintage sewing patterns and old advertisements from magazines.
* Exchanged a groovy orange and chrome chair that I found at Goodwill for a groovy vintage stool that I found at the Christie Antique Fair (after missing out on a great old school desk because I hesitated on the price. It’s true what they say about these fairs, if you see something you like, BUY IT! Buy it NOW! Save’s you from ugly bruising after kicking yourself.
* Organized and de-cluttered all my magazines and samples and labelled file and storage boxes.
* Hung a lovely piece of fabric over the bump-out wall. Covering over an otherwise blank column makes the room feel bigger.
* Painted the back of the door the same colour as the walls, just to make it stand out a little.
So, that’s this room done (for now, at least). The next project that’s just being finished up is the book room/office where you’ll see the return of the wasabi green paint that was banished from my office. I can’t quite get it out of my system, it seems.
Birds are so much wiser than we! A robin builds a nest for robins. A seagull builds a nest for seagulls. They don’t copy each other - or build themselves nests as described in The Birds’ Decorating Magazine.
Home Office: Floor Makeover
At the end of my first post, I mentioned something about how NOT to remove laminate flooring. I will explain. For the sake of clarity, however, I would like to state that this most assuredly would not be the approach I would take in a client’s home. There would be plans, drawings, floor samples, etc. In my own home, I am often gripped by a combination of inspiration, spontaneity, frustration and excitement and when I looked down at the cracks in the orange laminate, I was helpless to overcome it.
I thought I would just lift up a small portion in an inconspicuous spot and see what was happening below. It looked promising initially. Hardwood strips for sure. Result!
Not quite. You can see the glory that was the hardwood floor in the pictures (click on them for larger views). But once I had pulled up that little bit, I couldn’t help myself and just starting tearing off strips. I hadn’t actually moved any of the furniture out of the room yet.This is what not to do! It was a boiling hot day. The questions and admonitions were swirling around my brain. Things like, “How am I going to finish what is looking like a disastrous floor?”, “Should I have left ugly enough alone?”, “Is this worth it?” Worst of all, the phrase, “Fail to plan, plan to fail” was repeating in my ear like a needle stuck on an old 45.
Too late. Within minutes I had half the floor ripped out. It’s the one good thing about cheap laminate, it’s usually not glued or nailed to the subfloor so it is relatively easy to take up. Just, please, I beseech you, do not do it in a fit of impatience like I did. It just makes for more work later.
Once the old floor was gone (tossed, with admitted glee, into a pile in the backyard), the reality of just how awful the wood floor was, struck. My gut reaction was that the floor was not worth sanding and refinishing. It had too many stains and splotches and the ends of the strips were completely uneven. Horrible as it was, the laminate was covering a multitude of sins. The logical but not inexpensive solution would be to simply install a new hardwood (or engineered hardwood floor). However, I have always loved white painted floors and this seemed like a good opportunity to give it a try. The fact is too, that we might extend on to the back of the house at some point (bigger office!) so rather than invest in a temporary and more costly solution, cheap and cheerful was the way to go.
I put down a coat of primer while I was coming up with a solution as to how to fix the jagged periphery of the floor. The problem was that some of it would be covered by the baseboard (I dislike quarter round so wasn’t planning to use it and it still wouldn’t have covered the space) but it wasn’t deep enough to cover all of the gap. I ended up drawing a line about two inches from the wall and chiseled off all of the uneven bits. Then I filled in the gap with quarter inch deep wood strips- a compressor nail gun was brilliant for this. Then on went the baseboard, more primer, several coats of floor paint and trim paint (both in Benjamin Moore’s “Steam” AF-52 for continuity) and lots of caulking to fill in the gaps.
I couldn’t be happier with the results. The floor looks clean and seamless now and the white really brightens up the room. It does take a bit of maintenance-the dust bunnies are more obvious- but I’ll take that any day over the previous orange horror.
The office is ready for its closeup, Mr. Demille. Coming up next!
What do a bottle of wine from Australia, Ham radio, a mimeograph machine, and a ceramic bowl have in common? Well, nothing readily apparent for sure but they all came together in my mind, bit by bit, after my husband pointed out the great label on this bottle of Shiraz . It’s written in Morse Code and, for me, it not only has great graphic appeal but also set me off on a trip down a design memory lane of sorts.
Morse Code always makes me think of my dad. It was also known as “Continuous Wave” or “CW”, my dad’s initials as it happens. He was an amateur radio (Ham radio) enthusiast when I was a kid and an area in the basement (the rumpus room as we called it, definitely dating myself!) was set up with his equipment . It was kind of like an early form of social networking. You would find someone out there in the ether on a radio frequency and then have a conversation using Morse Code. Afterwards, you would send them a QSL card as confirmation that you connected. Cards were as individual as the people who sent them. I love that my dad’s is really straightforward, clean and graphic.
So how did I get from that to early copy machines? I was at a graduation party for a friend not long ago and, as I imagine happens to a lot of people of similar age, we got into a chin wag about memories of school days. For some reason someone mentioned a mimeograph machine, something which I remembered being called a Gestetner machine. If you’re of a certain vintage, you’ll recall them as a device with two rollers and a rather messy indgo/purple ink with a very distinct smell. You would crank a handle and magically a wettish copy would emerge. My Grade 7 memories of the Gestener machine lodged themselves into my brain.
Being a bit of a need-to-know-the-facts-about-stuff kinda gal, especially if it’s design related, I did what all citizens of the information age do, I looked it up on the Wiki. Much to my delight and chagrin (I’ll tell you why in a sec) I found out that machine was made in England in 1881 by a Hungarian inventor named, well, yes, Gestetner, but was updated in 1929 by the brilliant French/American industrial designer, Raymond Loewy. The reason why I was chagrined to discover this is because I have a Raymond Loewy book that I keep face out on a shelf in my office ( literally right above rather than right under my nose) and for some reason I did not remember that he had a large part in the design and success of this machine. I could have impressed everyone at the party with my deep knowledge of ancient copy machines-what an opportunity lost! Thank goodness for blogs. Anyway,who needs the Wiki when you have wonderful books? Shame on me.
Raymond Loewy, if you are unfamiliar with him, was a enviably prolific designer throughout the entire span of the twentieth century. The man ( I really want to call him the Dude, I’m sure the real dude wouldn’t mind) made everything. He’s probably most famous for designing the graphics for Lucky Strike cigarettes but he designed everything from bleach bottle labels to ocean liners. He travelled the world many times over, canoodled with the rich and famous, and headed up a design empire. Loewy was the only American designer who could cross the U.S.A. in a car, train, plane, helicopter and ocean liner all of his own design. He was probably the Most Interesting Man in the World and if he were still alive, they could likely use him in the Dos Equis ads. Just look at his picture!
The ceramic bowl, which I keep in my office, was also designed by Loewy, of course. I’d like to think he threw it on the pottery wheel himself but that’s probably a bit of a stretch. When would he have the time?!
If you’re still with me, and I hope you are, you may be wondering why I’m connecting Morse Code, the Gestetner, the bowl? Well, the Loewy connection in the last two for sure. For me, they all represent old and significant design technologies that have had huge impact on the way we live our lives today. The mimeograph machine is the precursor to the photocopier, Morse Code (though you no longer need to know it to have an amateur radio license) is still used in certain applications and strikes me as an early version of the keyboard and mouse elegantly rolled into one. And the ancient art of ceramics, still practiced much the same way as it always was in many parts of the world, is now also produced in high tech facilities in myriad ways. Who doesn’t have a bowl (or 50 if you’re me)? They are utilitarian, decorative, ubiquitous, necessary.
It’s the progression of technology that connects these disparate elements for me and I like making connections between things. It makes the sometimes overwhelming amount of stuff in our world a little more relatable and meaningful to me.
By the way, the wine (another ancient technology, come to think of it) was lovely.
Home Office: Make-over in progress
I love the colour grey and it seems to have been the “it” colour in the design world for the last couple of years. There is such a range of warm to cool tones that it makes it an ideal neutral in almost any room. Lately, it’s been coupled with orange, a combination I also love, though I fear that it’s prevalence is making me think that it’s starting to overstay its welcome.
I chose Benjamin Moore’s Gray Owl. I wanted a calm backdrop for a slightly overstuffed room. The previous green had a bit of a “buzzy” quality. It could be calm but it could also look a bit sickly and crazed, vaguely institutional. I predict, 19th Century Asylum Chic is going to be a trend, because everything is a trend at some point, but perhaps not for my office!
So, calm grey it is. However, so as not to doze off amidst all this lovely serenity, I thought perhaps a livelier accent colour on the window wall would lull me out of my reverie and keep me alert while I’m working. Orange? The deep cadmium variety, not the tangelo type, maybe? Do I want to embrace the trend while I still can? Before it jumps the proverbial shark?
Nope. Using it for this blog is enough for now. How about a classic red? Yes, why not. Plus, the great thing about doing an accent wall is that if you tire of it, you can change it easily and at not much expense. I wanted a red that swung toward the blue undertone rather than the orange and decided on Pittsburgh Paint’s Rum Runner. I didn’t paint the colour right in to the corners but instead left about a 3” inch margin around the periphery. This gave it some breathing space and also allowed me to test out the new Frog Tape. It works, but you have to remember to really flatten it to the wall so that the paint doesn’t seep underneath it.
I think the red gives just the right amount of punch to the room and I was surprised to realize just how many fabrics and accessories I have that have a similar red in them. I guess my instincts were right and further proof of that is the weird little round disc of cardboard (about 1 1/2” wide) I found after I painted the wall, trapped inside the old baseboard when I removed it. Maybe someone was trying to tell me something.
Next up: Part of what makes decorating fun and challenging: not knowing what’s behind walls or under ugly floors. Stay tuned!
Recognizing the need is the primary condition for design.
Welcome to my home office/workspace as it looked a few months ago.
I wish I could say that’s it’s just the first photo that’s tilted. In fact, the room slopes to the point where the hideous orange laminate flooring cracked and split in several places and the leaning tower of Billy (not so obvious in the photo but there is a v-shape between the wall and the bookcase) was actually a bit dangerous to walk past. It didn’t help that it was stuffed to the gills with fabric and books and that I didn’t use one of those Ikea thingys to attach it to the wall.
The wall colour, kind of a wasabi green which changed dramatically throughout the day, was here when we moved in (as was said hideous floor) and I liked it for quite a while. But, I’m a decorator and it’s in my dna to change things so I decided to re-do the space and make it more my own.
So on a really tight budget and with an equally tight space(about 80 sq. feet), I began the process of transforming it bit by bit. It’s an ongoing project; I keep thinking of new things to do or add or change. Maybe never-ending (in a positive way) is a better way to put it!
The “in progress” photos will follow along with some comments on how NOT to remove laminate flooring (in a fit of temporary insanity). Patience was not my friend that day.
