Multi-taskers switch jobs for success

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Shilpa, a 22-year-old, did Biology at school, literature in under graduation and now is an interior designer. Similarly, a number of youngsters in the city end up switching professions for various reasons. It is either about lack of decision-making skills, or not having the right opportunity. But professors and educational advisers feel youngsters don’t apply the knowledge they gain from the professional courses, when it comes to real projects.

“Quiet a few youngsters switch professions. The actual problem is that they don’t know that they want to do in life. Another big issue is that they lack decision-making skills. At times, kids take up one particular job based on the money factor. So many youngsters take up engineering thinking it’s ‘cool’ but during the course, they end up finding it very difficult to cope up,” says B. Ganesh Kumar, student counsellor who thinks, “Aptitude tests that youngsters take up after 10th and 12th are options that could highlight where their actual abilities and capabilities lie.”

The curriculum lacks imparting entrepreneurship skills in colleges, unlike universities abroad, is one problem that has to be looked into.

“When doctors they enter the professional field, there are easily able to identify their market and implement knowledge. But for engineers, the scene is completely different. Though they may learn technical knowledge, when it comes to taking up projects, students are not able to use their knowledge,” says C. Thangaraj, vice-chancellor, Anna University.

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Wayne classroom revamped by '9 by Design' revealed

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The first lesson Mary Beth Kopacz taught Thursday in the art room at John F. Kennedy Elementary School just after its $25,000 makeover was on interior design.

She pointed out the colors – the greens and orange that were repeated around the room – and asked students to come up with ideas of how to fill a blank space on the wall next to the new, flat screen television.

Kopacz turned the fifth graders’ first glimpse of the room’s transformation into a teaching moment. Later in the day, after a pep rally to celebrate the makeover, parents and students peaked into the room for a look at the big “reveal.”

Husband-and-wife team Bob and Cortney Novogratz of Bravo TV’s “9 By Design” spent three days working on the redesign that Kopacz won this summer as the grand prize in the Bounty Make a Clean Difference contest. The makeover may be featured on a future airing of the show.

Cortney Novogratz said that before the couple’s design team started work, the art room was filled with hand-me-downs and items that held together by duct tape.

“Now she has the best of everything,” Novogratz said. “I can only imagine how that is going to reflect to the kids in how they appreciate art and what they learn by coming here.”

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UF study: Store’s interior design may be best front against shoplifting

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Getting the goods on a thief may not be necessary if a store’s interior is designed to deter shoplifting in the first place, a new University of Florida study finds.

Making stores attractive and alluring to shoppers has long been the aim of retail designers rather than preventing theft, but a store’s interior layout often influences shoplifters in whether to steal there, said Caroline Cardone, who did the research for her master’s thesis in UF’s interior design department.

“Shoplifters enter a store, scan the space and quickly judge whether it’s unprotected, understaffed or offers a quick escape,” she said. “Once they recognize a store’s vulnerability, they’ll take advantage of it again and again.”

Some common patterns emerged in Cardone’s analysis of data collected by the Loss Prevention Research Council, a multidisciplinary team of UF researchers, which included interviews with 20 apprehended shoplifters in Orlando, Dania, Fla., and Chicago.

The criminals often sought stores with chaotic, overpacked aisles or crowded, cramped spaces because they offered good camouflage, she said.

Wide, clear aisles, a clean, well-maintained interior and a logically planned store make it less likely for thieves to escape detection, Cardone said. Aisles should be visible from the checkout lane, and the cashier’s view of the store should not be blocked by high shelves overstuffed with merchandise, she said.

“Such design tactics will help contribute to the perception of the store being orderly and well-monitored, which seems to make shoplifters feel more vulnerable,” said Cardone, who will present her findings Tuesday at a two-day retail design workshop at UF.

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An upholstered headboard can reset your bedroom’s style, mood

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Just changing the headboard can alter the mood in your bedroom, expand its the sense of space and recast the room’s style into something totally new.

An upholstered headboard, for example, can make a room warmer and cozier, said interior designer June Shea of Shea Studio Interiors  

She took a formal and old world bedroom and transformed its style to elegant contemporary simply by changing the headboard. She used a geometric design with camel-colored ultrasuede and buttons done in a contrasting brown to cover a headboard that towered over the bed.
“It added an element of drama with the exaggerated height,” she said.

To determine how big to make an upholstered headboard “a guideline would be short enough to hang a picture (at good viewing height) above the headboard or to make the headboard the focal point by taking it above the height where a picture would hang,” Shea said.
Kelley Proxmire, a member of the Washington Design Center Hall of Fame, said she encourages her clients to go taller, not smaller.
 “Many of my clients, when updating their bedrooms, are hesitant to make their covered headboards significantly taller, but I think taller headboards can add an important element of proper scale to the room,” she said.

Proxmire creates stunning bedrooms by draping walls of fabric over upholstered headboards for a luxuriously sophisticated focal point. 

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A Kitchen Revolution Aimed At Freeing Women

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This week in New York, the city's foodie elites gathered to poke around an 80-year-old kitchen. It was designed in 1926 for a housing project in Frankfurt, Germany. But rather than being updated with Ikea fixtures, the entire kitchen was ripped out and shipped, piece by piece, to New York.

The Frankfurt Kitchen is now in the Museum of Modern Art, in between the Andy Warhols and the MoMA snack bar. It's the centerpiece of a new show called Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen.

The kitchen is tiny, the size of a VW bus. It's mostly outfitted in gunmetal gray — no granite countertops. But through one of the first architecturally designed kitchens, you can see the ideas that launched a million home remodeling projects: built-in bins, undercabinet storage, pullout drawers and a four-burner stove.

These days, there are magazines and television programs devoted to kitchen design, but in 1926 it was a new idea. In fact, curator Juliet Kinchin tells NPR's Robert Smith, designing a kitchen was actually a political act.

The Politically Progressive Kitchen

"There's always been that political dimension to kitchens," Kinchin explains.

"For centuries, really, the kitchen had been ignored by design professionals, not least because it tended to be lower-class women or servants who occupied the kitchen space," she says.

"The kitchens were often poorly ventilated, shoved to the basement or annex, and caused a lot of drudgery in the kitchen."

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Retail Space and Interior Design

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One of the many areas in which an interior designer can specialize is retail space. Retail space refers to any area where things are sold. This includes shopping malls, grocery stores, and other types of shops and stores. There are several things that go into designing retail space that interior designers need to consider.

A good layout of a retail space will make customers feel comfortable and in a pleasant mood, making them more willing to spend money. Those who have been inside stores where the walls seemed to be closing in and the space was too small know how uncomfortable it feels. That's why interior designers work closely with store owners to design a retail space that is calming and inviting.

When the interior designers sit down with the store owner, they ask questions about the store and the customer base. The focus is on finding a compromise between what the customers want and what the store needs. The designer also needs to focus the attention of the owner and show them exactly what needs to be done.

When designing retail space, the designer looks at the area of the store that is most popular with customers. In stores, this space is usually the front, near the windows or displays that show some of the store's offerings. The owner needs to decide the space they want to focus on and the designer finds ways to draw the customer there. For example, the designer may layout the flooring to lead customers to the jewelry case or setup displays to give customers only one way to walk through the store.

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SCAD’s interior design B.F.A. program receives accreditation from the Council for Interior Design Accreditation

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The Savannah College of Art and Design announces that its interior design program leading to the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree is accredited by the Council for Interior Design Accreditation (206 Grandville Ave., Suite 350, Grand Rapids, MI, 49503). CIDA's accreditation affirms that SCAD's interior design program meets or exceeds the rigorous standards of CIDA and ensures that SCAD interior design graduates are prepared to enter professional practice.

CIDA, formerly known as the Foundation for Interior Design Education Research, is an independent, nonprofit accrediting organization for interior design education programs at colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. For more than 35 years, this organization has been committed to the ongoing enrichment of the interior design profession through identifying, developing and promoting quality standards for the education of aspiring interior designers.

"SCAD's interior design program is exceptional preparation for a student intending to enter a career in interior design," said Tom Fischer, SCAD chief academic officer. "We are proud that CIDA has recognized the quality of the SCAD interior design program in this way. We look forward to continuing to work with CIDA to ensure that SCAD interior design graduates are ready to contribute to and lead the profession when they graduate."

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Online Degree Programs at Westwood College

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About Westwood College

Westwood College — Online Campus, a Top 20 Online College, is the quality answer to higher education for today's busy lifestyles. The only difference between earning your degree through Westwood College — Online Campus versus a traditional classroom setting is the quality of your life. With our top-rated online learning platforms, you get a quality Westwood education from home on a flexible schedule that meets your unique needs. It's perfect for individuals eager to launch a career quickly: Our career-focused education means students can earn a bachelor's degree in just three years or an associate degree in as little as 20 months.

Westwood College — Online Campus is one of 18 Westwood College campuses across six states. Based in Denver, Colorado, since 1953, Westwood's total enrollment exceeds currently exceeds 15,000, while more than 20,000 graduates have already transformed their lives with a Westwood degree. Westwood College — Online Campus empowers students to meet the workforce needs in in-demand employment fields.

Admission Overview

At Westwood, you'll have a Success Team^sm dedicated to providing personal assistance and advice, both inside and outside the classroom. This team of five experts — your admissions representative, student finance specialist, student services advisor, career services advisor and program director — will guide you through the enrollment and student financing processes, course scheduling, complimentary tutoring and more. And that's just for starters. At Westwood, our goal is to deliver a college experience tailored to your unique needs, because we understand that there's no one else quite like you.

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Interior Design Department preparing students for professional success

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A new visitor to a lab in VCU’s Department of Interior Design is briefly met with polite smiles before the rows of faces return to their computer monitors. Nobody is surfing the Internet or e-mailing friends. Each student is simply locked into the latest project on their screen.

Sharran Parkinson, Ph.D., chair of Interior Design at VCU, uses words like “rigorous” and “demanding” to describe the curriculum in the Interior Design program. The hard work has paid off. The department was ranked in three categories this year in DesignIntelligence’s annual publication, America’s Best Architecture and Design Schools. The graduate interior design program was ranked No. 4 by regional firms of schools in the South and No. 6 by national firms, and the undergraduate program was ranked No. 5 by regional firms in the South.

Parkinson said the recognition was rewarding, particularly coming from professional design firms. She said it illustrated the department’s success in teaching students professional skills and in integrating high-tech advances in design with the traditional hand-drawn techniques that have long been in favor.

Parkinson said the department is blessed with dedicated faculty members that put an emphasis on the academic aspect of the study of interior design, but who also keep students focused on the practical implications of their work.

“We expect our students to be just as devoted as we are,” Parkinson said. “And the students here are very serious and very engaged in what they do. If you don’t want to be challenged, it’s not a good place to be.”

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Fashion Design Classes

Clothes are not only a practical concern for people, but rather, an aesthetic and social differentiation. Clothing provides information about social and cultural level of the person who wears it, about his tastes and preferences or about his career.

These classes reveal the secrets of creating clothes, so you can express your personality as well through them. The courses address key issues of fashion creation, from general information about the body structure, to information on color and fabric characteristics.

The fashion design classes also provide informations concerning the history of costume, and a specialized dictionary that captures the most important terms for this discipline. The steps you will make, will lead you from the design on paper drawing, through the intermediate stage of computing to the last step: cutting the garment that you have thought.

These are some common themes in fashion design courses:

• Drawing – a mean of communication, way of expressing specific fashion design;
• Links between character, environment, age
• Clothes - with specific reference to a specific domain ( theater, cinema, fashion etc)
• Fashion Design - mirror of everyday life
• Practical applications
• Restoration of Costumes - costume history
• Specific design technologies
• Materials, colors, prints, combinations, different materials, accessories.

 

Here are some design schools that offer on line fashion design training:

• Westwood College - Denver, Colorado which offers a Fashion Merchandising Degree
• The Art Institute of Pittsburghwith a Fashion & Retail Management Course
• Ashworth College (Manitoba Canada or Georgia US) which offers diplomas in Fashion design
• Penn Foster Global - Scranton,Pennsylvania - Dressmaking and Design course
• Stratford Career Institute – Fashion Merchandising and Design Course
• Milan Fashion Campus – Milano, Italy

The fashion design courses help the participants to make order in their mind and thoughts It is about order in this special area, called fashion design, where everyone thinks he has a word to say. In order to have a word to say, it is recommended before all to understand more. 

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Interior Design Classes Online

Interior design classes online represent a means to get acquainted and learn more about interior design in an accessible and comfortable way. It is a convenient learning method since it doesn't involve observing a fix, strict timetable. The learner can improve his/her decorating abilities or prepare professionally for a career resorting to this type of training.

Some online interior design classes approach the learning process more conventionally, providing an introductory course to this subject, one that is accredited with a professional interior design diploma.

For instance, Rhodec International has its own website which offers a lot of information on this matter, and puts at the reader's disposal numerous didactic materials for the training in this field. Moreover, a series of manuals burned on CDs are available for those who enroll in this form of distance learning.

Rhodec International offers a free sampler from the courses available on the site. This way, the client can “test” the quality of the materials before buying the actual package of interior design courses.

The only condition required to be able to access the free sampler is to introduce an enrollment key transmitted to each person that views the website.

The main feature of these online interior design classes is that they are structured in 10 major detailed lessons. Each of them ends with a test to evaluate the information assimilated meanwhile. The lessons include information on the following topics: principles of design, theory of colors, methods of developing color schemes, studies on material (stone, wood, metal, glass), notions on measuring rooms and estimating the quantity of materials, planning rooms, decorative paint finishes, lighting, internal fittings and many others.

The self-assessment system allows thee learner to sincerely appreciate his/her progress, enabling him/her to complete extra projects to fix the problematic issues. Besides the evaluation tests at the end of each lesson, there are some pdfs containing the worksheets for each lesson so that one can return over the aspects that have posed problems.

Since they are accredited, rewarding the learner with a recognized diploma, these online interior design classes are very useful and suitable for persons with fluctuating programs.

Read more: www.interiordesignerclasses.com

 

 

Interior Design Classes Online

Interior design classes online represent a means to get acquainted and learn more about interior design in an accessible and comfortable way. It is a convenient learning method since it doesn't involve observing a fix, strict timetable. The learner can improve his/her decorating abilities or prepare professionally for a career resorting to this type of training.
Some online interior design classes approach the learning process more conventionally, providing an introductory course to this subject, one that is accredited with a professional interior design diploma.
For instance, Rhodec International has its own website which offers a lot of information on this matter, and puts at the reader's disposal numerous didactic materials for the training in this field. Moreover, a series of manuals burned on CDs are available for those who enroll in this form of distance learning.
Rhodec International offers a free sampler from the courses available on the site. This way, the client can “test” the quality of the materials before buying the actual package of interior design courses.
The only condition required to be able to access the free sampler is to introduce an enrollment key transmitted to each person that views the website.
The main feature of these online interior design classes is that they are structured in 10 major detailed lessons. Each of them ends with a test to evaluate the information assimilated meanwhile. The lessons include information on the following topics: principles of design, theory of colors, methods of developing color schemes, studies on material (stone, wood, metal, glass), notions on measuring rooms and estimating the quantity of materials, planning rooms, decorative paint finishes, lighting, internal fittings and many others.
The self-assessment system allows thee learner to sincerely appreciate his/her progress, enabling him/her to complete extra projects to fix the problematic issues. Besides the evaluation tests at the end of each lesson, there are some pdfs containing the worksheets for each lesson so that one can return over the aspects that have posed problems.
Since they are accredited, rewarding the learner with a recognized diploma, these online interior design classes are very useful and suitable for persons with fluctuating programs.
Read more about here: www.interiordesignerclasses.com.