Great Design is Cohesive, but Cohesion is Illusive

*Part IV of the seven part series: What Spending a Decade Inside Our Design Firm Taught Our CFO 

The idea of remodeling my home into something new and fresh is intoxicating. If you’re like me, we dream of it for years, and once we have the resources we can’t wait to begin. But then reality sets in and overwhelm is right around the corner. We are required to make dozens of decisions in quick succession.

What’s more, those decisions are interrelated. There exists a real danger in making choices in isolation which have no connective theme or thread. The combinations are almost infinite so projects can quickly become chaotic and unwieldy. The possibilities and their implications blind me in a vast white-out of decision fatigue.

Complicating things further, I am not one who can see the finished product in my mind’s eye. So as the rooms come together, I notice my design choices failing in real time! I feel like I have to remake decisions again and again in a demented design déjà vu.

Happily, Jen at Thirteen and Crowne has a clairvoyant ability to identify an overarching, unifying theme, cut through the noise and chaos, and create cohesion. She is not so rigid as other designers I’ve known, who force clients into their self-promoted “brand” features. Instead, Jen has the foresight, through a proven process, to guide clients through a series of key choices. It is this collaboration with her clients to develop a powerful design theme that makes the design air-tight and the decision making seamless and smooth. Her clients avoid overwhelm.

In a full-service project, cohesive design makes all things better: design development, construction drawings, contractor coordination, material selections, furnishing plans, and final installation. To the client, the finished space feels cohesive and effortless. Behind the scenes, it is the result of artistic, disciplined consistency.

Cohesion is powerful. In a home, it reconfirms to the owner that the space reflects them without seeming disjointed or scattered. Guests feel the connection between the person and the place immediately. In a commercial environment, customers walk in and automatically infer that the business is thoughtful, capable, and worth spending money on. In both cases, cohesion is not an accident; it’s by design.