Bauhaus | Early Career Influences
One of the many rights of passage in a budding career is a first job in that field. We all have to start somewhere, and along the way these early stages of our careers influence who we become in our next. So often these lessons and beautifully transformative times do not leave us either.
Bauhaus
As a designer, one of the most influential aspects of my career was the Bauhaus movement. The Bauhaus was a definitive design movement of the modern age that believed in offered foundation training in many design disciplines alongside modern day technology. It was a movement that believed the craft of art could find better success in combining it with design and technology.
With the anniversary of Bauhaus coming up, I have found my thoughts reaching back to my first design job out of college, working for the American Decorative Arts and its owner Chris Kennedy, in Northampton, Massachusetts.
American Decorative Arts
American Decorative Arts bought and sold mid-century modern furnishings. Its clients were mostly dealers of the same objects, and sometimes individual collectors. Besides a modern showroom and sleek 20th-century style offices, ADA also had an extensive library filled with 20th century design books and catalogs, all collected by Chris Kennedy. My job you ask? I created all the branding, graphics and the premiere website for the company, as well as cataloged the design library. To absorb the mid-century aesthetic that Kennedy wanted replicated quite precisely, I was assigned to study the books and catalogs on design and typography he had collected. I was reading and learning non-stop – and the books on Bauhaus really intrigued me.
Concurrent with studying the past, I was also immersing myself in the unfolding future: HTML and web design, which at the time was a brand new medium, with only a handful of good looking sites. The site I designed was an expression of modernism on the interface of early HTML.
With so much knowledge to take in, I realized that design could be more than just visual, it could be an all encompassing experience. Throughout that time I took in and grew my mindset and design career more than I could process or believe possible. Bauhaus was a movement that informed a way of thinking about design and beauty, celebrating minimalist purity.
Not so suddenly, but gradually, I found my skillset being heightened by the hours of aesthetic research of industrial design, alongside my tech skills.
Influence Today
There is no doubt in my mind that even today all those hours of learning have influenced my career. Outside of just learning how to match design alongside tech, I also grew a deep love for home design. I realized that the spaces we inhabit and the emotions they invoke can be a very powerful experience.
As I take a new step in my career, an announcement I am very excited to share with you all soon, I realize that all those hours studying mid-century design are still with me. Thank you to all the early career stages for bringing me to where I am now… and where I am going to be.
