Design is all around us

Taking advantage of a spontaneous moment on a late summer day, my dad and I set off for a drive in the Nevada countryside to visit the old family ranch. We packed a lunch, filled the Bronco with gas, and ventured off, cameras in hand.

Jerry Warren, Elko County, Nevada

I had just completed my first year of college in Los Angeles. Contrasted with my new, urban perspective, the Nevada countryside took on a keen beauty I had not before fully appreciated—the saturated blue of the sky, the diversity of color in the brush, the texture and detail of an old rope wrapped around a fence post. I hadn’t yet decided upon design as a career, and these observations were the beginnings of learning how to see my surroundings in a new way. A realization that design is all around us, we just need to look.

My travels to Europe have provided some of the greatest sources of visual inspiration. During these sabbaticals, I feel most tuned-in, and best able to appreciate, the elements of design when I see them—planned or by chance. My time as a flâneur on the streets of Paris has been particularly magical. As Friedrich Nietzsche so keenly put it, “An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.”

Perfect symmetry on the Quai du Louvre

Form and unity at the Musée Rodin

Repetition, balance and proportion in Trocadero

Color on Rue du Cherche-Midi

Perspective in the Jardin du Luxembourg

Focusing on details at Les Deux Maggots

Contrast of the extraordinary
and the banal at l’Hotel de Lauzun,
Île Saint-Louis

Form meets function in the perfect reward:
St. Germain des Prés