Design Matters More Than Ever

Every Saturday morning, usually coffee in hand, I open my friend Hans’ ​Differentiated Design newsletter.

Hans Lorei never misses.

But this week, after the California fires, his words hit differently.

FIRE & SNOW

I flew back out of LA on Tuesday, the day the fires started. The whole thing is incredibly tragic. Some of the most beautiful and storied neighborhoods in the world are on fire and we are watching history burn. On Monday & Tuesday, for many in area, their focus may have been tending to their landscaping or preparing for an event or what they were going to cook. And then all of a sudden, life goes up in flames.

I used to work with a man, Turner, whose parents home burned down. I remember asking him about it in the following days. He told me their greatest pain was not health, shelter, insurance or financial related. It’s just that your whole life, everything you’ve built, is immolated in a few hours. It’s a feeling of being exposed and robbed and totally vulnerable.

A home is so much more than a structure. It is your life and refuge. Sometimes I go back and forth in my mind, “is design just vanity – or does it matter and what’s its proper place?” I know beauty matters. I am an unabashed advocate for that – we don’t have nearly enough of it. But home matters a LOT – and good design is just simply making a beautiful functional home. Where is the line between your home and your life? Impossible to define, they are woven together. That’s why design matters.

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Assuming your house didn’t burn down, we’re all very blessed to able to continue to improve and enjoy our homes today. I don’t take that for granted, and it’s moments like these I realize how fragile and transient it all is. Tomorrow is not promised.

Hans has this special gift for explaining what makes spaces interesting. While he’s ​blown up on Instagram​ lately, his writing is even better. His newsletters are so good that I keep a special folder for them.

I thought it would be fun to go back through the past year of his letters and share the best nuggets I’ve gleaned.

These principles have totally shaped the way I see (and create) things. I’ve distilled them as much as possible.

Developing Taste:

• Become an intentional observer. Cultivate the knack of noticing. The spaces you love the most – what makes them unique? The way trim wraps a doorway. Light patterns dancing through trees. The warmth of layered lighting. Perfect proportions. So many daily observations make us better designers and creators if we let them.

• Taste is both innate and cultivated. Like Rick Rubin and Ian Schrager, trust your instincts while constantly honing them through observation.

• Take more walks. Nothing better to recharge the battery, get inspired, and stay healthy!

• Travel exposes you to new normals – design solutions that feel revolutionary in one context but traditional in another.