NIGERIAN DESIGN SHOW REVIEW- INTERIORS BY DESIGN EPISODE 1 AND 2

A few months ago, on my Instagram story, I posted some pictures from a design show I was watching. The first being Interior Design Masters Season 2 and the second was HGTV’s Design Star. You can watch S1 of Interior Design Masters on Netflix. It’s a good watch and the cast is all amateur designers. Design Star is also quite good and I discovered amazing designers from the show. While I was raving about the show, I thought to mention mentioned that Nigeria had a design show called Interiors by Design and I described it as “not good”.

I still stand by it but I’d like to give a proper review of the entire show. If I’m lucky, the producers will get to see this and do better if the show is ever renewed. I will be reviewing this in 6 blog posts- 10 episodes in 5 posts and one reserved for the finale.

Interiors by Design aired for only one season in 2016. It was produced by Red TV. It is available to watch on You Tube. The Competition was Judged by Titi Fowora-head judge and mentor of the competition and lead designer at Inu Design, Osaru Alile who is a permanent judge and Lead Designer at CC Interiors and a guest judge that changed with every episode. The prize was an all-expense paid trip to England for a design course at Decor and Rainbow.

Before I get into the review, I’d like to state that the entire team of Interiors by Design should be proud, it ris hard being the first to do anything, especially with the economic climate of Nigeria. Getting this approved for production must have been hard, even harder 5 years ago when people weren’t talking about design as much. As much as I respect the effort I’m going to be as honest as I can. Let’s go.

EPISODE 1 -AUDITIONS

This episode was all about the auditions. The auditions were guest judged by Yinka Ilori who is a British – Nigerian Product Designer I love. His work is colourful and has a freshness to it I enjoy. Before the auditions begin, Titi states that the show was created to give design talent a platform and find Nigeria’s next design star. I found this to be really exciting because investing in Nigerian design talent is super important to me. However, I was quickly let down by the number of people present for the auditions. They were about 20 give or take. It was difficult to conceive how they were going to select candidates from this small number. You might think that they had done some prior screening. However, the flier they put out indicated that this was the first screening and this was further confirmed by the fact that a good number of people did not understand that this was an interior design competition. I’m not sure if this was as a result of poor publicity or making fun of less knowledgeable people for comedic purposes but it was not a good look. The year was 2016, they could have spent some money on marketing to get a reasonable crowd. Their claim to be looking for the best of the best fell short because how could the next design star be found after screening less than 2 dozen people.

The screening required the contestants to bring “evidence of creativity” which could be a mood board, sketches, or a portfolio This was another spot prior screening could’ve helped. There were contestants who made soft furnishings and brought samples of their work. There was a person who installed kitchen extractors. “Evidence of creativity” is broad and seeing the fact that Nigerians often mistake interior styling, furniture design/ manufacturing and interior design it would’ve helped to make sure that the people coming forward actually understood what they were getting in to. A furniture designer/ manufacturer actually stated that he saw himself overseeing his staff in his workshop in the next five years. The question then is “Why are you here?” Product designers often take on interior design as part of their skill set and vice versa but not all of them do that or interested in that transition.

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I did enjoy their demeanor to the contestants. They were firm but encouraging. Even with people who seemed to be a bit confused, they tried to understand their skill set and whether they’d be a good fit for the competition. They listened to a few people’s ideas on space planning. A contestant was a bit touchy about the fact that she wasn’t in university and responded in a way that could’ve been considered rude. That didn’t cloud their judgment and she did make it to the competition

In all, they had slim pickings and selected the best people they could from the group. There were a few architects, product designers a number of interior designers and decorators and the rest were people who had interest in the field. I was interested in the kind of work Ese, Ife and Olatunji were going to come up with.

EPISODE 2- MOOD BOARDING

The episode ones with Titi in a classroom with the with the contestants teaching them the “fundamentals of interior design. Why is it necessary to teach the ” supposed” best the basics? I was confused.

Titi asks a question about the difference between an interior designer and a decorator, lists out where to get inspiration, explains what a mood board is and probably provided more information that eventually got cut out from the aired footage. The camera pans around the room as people look bored, doze off or are busy scrolling away on Instagram. Yikes.

Class is over and the challenge is presented. They are given a floor plan of a house and required to come up with the client, brief and create a moodboard for the living room. I was confused as to why they weren’t just given the floor plan of the living room, but whatever.

The contestants are split in to teams of two and are required to make physical moodboards from design and home improvement magazines. At this point I was really underwhelmed. As much as mood-boarding is important to the design process. I wanted to see people work on spaces but I guessed that would come up later. Creating the brief was an interesting part of the exercise. Design is story telling and I was intrigued by the personas people would create and what design decisions would be made for them.

Another annoying part of this episode was the camera work and the directing. We were barely able to see or listen in on the contestant’s ideas and how they were working on their challenges. A while after they began, Titi swoops in, checks out their work, states that they need some inspiration and whisks them to African Artist’s Foundation’s Gallery. I don’t think this “excursion” was necessary. We could’ve watched the contestants work rather than watch them walk around a gallery and be told “Art gives inspiration”. It being unnecessary was further underscored by the fact that this trip did not show up in any of the mood-boards

They get back, finish their task and the guest judge was introduced; Omon Anenih Mordi the president of the Interior Designers Association of Nigeria and lead designer at her brand; Blue Mahogany.

The judging was based on cohesiveness and storytelling and good communication physically. I thought that was fair as those are things that a good designer should be able to do well. I was excited to finally see what they had been working on.

I’m not sure what happened because Titi did explain that the mood board was to present the idea of the design to the client, but most of the teams had gone on to design the space even down to picking out lighting. The mood boards at least from what I could see ( poor camera work again, there were mood-boards that didn’t even get shot in full) felt like furniture schedule. It was hard to visualize what style the contestants where going for and how it served the needs and desires of their imagined client. I feel like most of the contestants failed at this, seeing as Titi did explain that mood boards were a bit abstract and their utility lay in presenting the idea/ inspiration of the design. For some reason none of the judges complained about this. At this point I’m like anything goes.

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Team Tayo and Vivian created the strongest client identity and mood board and they won the challenge. Team Zainab and Seun with the old rich woman who hates coffee tables client also did a good job.

The two bottom teams which had communication issues and another whose client’s persona didn’t match the mood board got sent home- or sent to the drawing board as they described it. I think the eviction was deserved.

At the end of the episode, one of the contestants insisted they had not been given enough material to mood board with. I agreed, outside of magazines I’d have liked to see some swatches and samples. Mood boarding for interiors is nothing without textures.

The episode ended with the narrator trying and failing to create tension because two of the contestants were in a conversation with each other. The narrator was going on about the utility of friendship in this competition. Please why this? I understand that reality TV thrives off manufactured drama. But this was quite off putting.

These two episodes had me disappointed. Was this the best of the best in interior design battling it out as they had claimed? I was also a bit annoyed because the judges had enough international exposure and had been professionals long enough to know this wasn’t cutting it. I mean Osaru has a design degree from Fashion Institute of New York. I had my fingers crossed that future episodes would be better.

Were they?

You’ll see.