CUSTODY BATTLE (about lisa)

Escaping the September rain inside a newly opened Starbucks, just minutes away from our downtown office, I begin the awkward yet thrilling attempts of writing our new design blog, Blogish.

Blogish? Yes. It’s simple and the “ish” gives me license to not feel hemmed in.

In addition, the pairing of the gorgeous octopus, represents the unlimited tentacles of how much life lives within the nonverbal cues in which overload my brain within a moments notice. From silence to chaos, it is here in which the ‘right brained me’ is very exposed. Obviously, I hold hands quite well with the tactile and the visceral wooing.

Yet, I have learned over these last 13 years of business with my husband, who is left brained centric, there is a lot to be said from holding both sides equally. In fact my “dream board centerfold” is of both a tree house restaurant design AND a clean closet. Growing up, my obsession with design came in varied forms of drawing and dreaming.

Creating and improving a situation was always churning even while in conversations or while homework was kicking me to the curb. In my struggle of not understanding one thing, I wanted to shift gears.

To shift to creating, whatever form that was, was like a friend tapping me on the shoulder, saying..psst….this way!” But growing up, I saw over and over that the Left brained got the good grades. The Left brained figured things out faster.

The Left brained were the leaders who got recognized and rewarded. It wasn’t until after being kicked out of high school, I found that I was actually dyslexic. The spiraling that took place within me, boy raged a war that made me question as if I was broken. And unfortunately it wouldn’t be until later in my adulting, that I would begin to understand and have a peace with how I was wired. Those obstacles of clean lines and dimensional thinking, I find that they really weren’t at odds. It’s just maybe there's a divide between the two. And in seeing great design, as a designer, is obvious that it takes a good brain to figure how to bring those two worlds together. The length of energy expelled in thinking that there was a custody battle that needed to be won, over my brain, was so unfortunate.

You know we all take time in our becoming and nothing, even failure is never, never wasted.

We need dreamers, thinkers, doers, helpers, to make the world go round. I needn’t to change but be changed by what others offered to what I brought. In that holds the marriage of two sides that can become pretty incredible. And that’s where Design, I feel has its strongest pull.

When the Right and Left brains lead and then become each other’s support, the collaborative of each other becomes widely addictive. I have designed a lot of spaces. And believe me, I can get so high on the behind the scenes of watching people do their thing well, waiting for me to do mine on top of their work.

Though we have done quite a lot in this last 13 years, we are just getting started to dive into the best designs that are deep within us. The world needs us and it needs you. So whether you hire a design firm, maybe us or become one, i urge you to stand your ground with what you naturally bring to the table and lean on others to fill in the other sides around that.

And to me that is what makes up beautiful design.

The left and the right brained. The give, the take. The ebb, and the flow. This is where great design truly emerges.