587: Darrell Long: The Best Design Comes From Within, Not Pinterest

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September 8, 2020 • 54 mins

Welcome to A Well-Designed Business! Are you really, truly, creating your own designs and ideas? Today’s guest wants you to learn to start with the story you want to tell and to express that in your design. LuAnn gets the pleasure of talking with so many great designers on the show, but she rarely gets the opportunity to chat with a commercial designer. That dynamic flips once again today, because she is joined by Darrell Long of Wilson Associates. Darrell believes it is important to develop your critical thinking in order to be an exceptional designer. He is here to share with us that the magic of creativity is in the story and it is the art behind the design. This is something that he is very passionate about and he considers it his mission to share with other designers, especially younger ones. Please join us in this very special episode!

Darrell Long possesses more than 25 years of brand-strengthening design experience that evokes a distinct sense of location, while engaging the world's most discriminating travelers. As Regional Managing Director Long oversees the design direction of the Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Dallas studios.

Throughout his professional career, Darrell has set new standards for luxury, comfort, and innovation in hospitality interior design across the world. He has been recognized throughout the hospitality design industry for his emphasis on modernist principles rooted in contemporary and technological design practices. Of the contemporary, Darrell is a fan of Gehry and Piano.

Darrell’s ultimate source of inspiration has always been music. In his early years, Darrell embarked on a career path to become a musician, which further ignited his love for the fine arts, particularly museum exhibition design, ultimately leading him to discover an innate passion for architecture and interior design. When Darrell isn’t leading his team designing world-class projects, he can be found enjoying music, playing the guitar and piano, indulging in great food, wine, film, and spending time at home.

Show Highlights:

You’re either a follower or a leader, so pick one side!
The problem with spending all day “following” people on social media.
Critical thinking should be the linchpin of what we do as creative people.
Young designers tend to not look beyond what is immediately in their face.
Coming up with something purely honest is how your own story comes about.
There is a roadmap on connecting a conceptual idea to the final idea of a design.
Darrell touches on the distinction between a story and a concept.
Stretch your noggin and get the most you can out of an idea.
Great art is always about a story.
Darrell’s goal is to help the younger designers find their voice.
When you’re looking at other peoples’ work and using their ideas to make them your own, that is just collecting someone else’s thoughts, and not creating your own.
Darrell provides a powerful Hemingway analogy as a perfect example of thinking critically.
Darrell shares some strategies and tips on how to be a better critical thinker and how to develop your designer conceptual edge.