My husband read Pollyanna — you know, the “glad game” girl? — for his classic book group this weekend. It got me thinking, Gentle Readers. I realize that I’ve been channeling *my* inner Pollyanna recently.
The pandemic, quarantine — it has been an unspeakably awful year. But Polly-Annie found a silver lining:
Our mighty design team now has a system for designing gorgeous spaces 100% remotely. The whole shebang: wallpaper, custom window treatments, custom furniture, custom-cut rug, lighting, etc.
In fact, NBC4 just featured a project that we did 100% virtually: Design by FaceTime: Virtually Recreate Your Space. (If you don’t want to watch the clip, MSN captured the essence in this article.)
In refining our system for designing remotely, we re-thought EVERYTHING. Here are the 3 most important lessons that will outlast Covid.
1. Not every meeting has to be in person. We’re all Zoomed out right now, and I’m *definitely* looking forward to seeing more clients in person again. For some things, though — such as reviewing inspiration pictures with our clients — nothing is gained by being in the same room.
2. Less paper, more PowerPoint. I’m a paper person, so yes, it took a pandemic for me to admit that sharing mood boards, tearsheets, floorplans, and 3D drawings via PowerPoint is highly effective. We still send samples, of course, but it’s easier to press “send” on a PPT link than to package up a binder containing reams of manually created tearsheets.
PowerPoint design presentations also enable me to make last-minute changes, which my team really loves ;)
3. Making decisions quickly saves both money and time. We’ve always known the money part: fast approval of a design plan = fewer of our hours sourcing additional options = lower fees.
Now, though, we have a new reason to encourage speedy decision-making: broken supply chains. Everything is taking longer, so we must get our orders in the queue asap — before current stock runs out, or before our favorite item is discontinued.
(This isn’t just for trade resources, by the way; I saw a 20-week wait time for a sofa from…was it Crate & Barrel? Broken supply chains are REAL.)
So. Call me Pollyanna, but I’m going to take those silver linings wherever I can find them.
Annie Elliott Design is based in Washington, DC, with satellite offices in St. Michaels, Maryland and Middlebury, Vermont. More on that soon. Annie’s design work has appeared on NBC4 and in numerous local and national publications, including HGTV Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Washingtonian Magazine.
