How a Card Game Made Me a Better Design Editor
cards, Dior Home
When I was little I remember I loved playing the card game Concentration at the kitchen table with my Mom. In the game you place all the cards in a deck face down on the table in random order or in rows. Each player takes a turn and flips over two cards. If they find a pair, they remove the pair from the game. Any cards that aren't a pair get turned back over. The person who collects the most pairs wins. It's a visual memory game. I was good at it (but of course I'll never know if my Mom was letting me win). The cruel irony is that this fond memory I have is of a memory game I played with my Mom, who ultimately suffered from and was taken away from me by Alzheimer's. Fuck you Alzheimer's.
But I digress. My point is just this: the skills of visual identity and memory that were honed during these matches ultimately proved to be an essential component of a big chunk of my career. Think about that for a second. We are talking about skills I learned at AGE FOUR AND FIVE having a direct impact on my career performance. Covering the design market, finding stylistic matches and keeping a mental catalogue of them is something I've been doing for years. And I'm still good at it. So, not only can I give you a source for a given item, I can also tell you that one source has it at one price and another source has something similar for $25 less or half the price.
Recently I found some twining pink pairs at different price points so I thought I might share them here. Caveat: I am not prepared to enter into the discussion about the evils of knockoffs. I might be soon. I've been doing a lot of thinking about it. I really wish I could take the high road and swear off all rip-offs, copies, reproductions and interpretations. But I'm not able to do that right now. What about you? Have you thought about it? Should we discuss it? Let me know. Meanwhile, I'm going to leave these pairs right here:
LEFT: Muuto Nerd Chair, $599, The Modern Shop
RIGHT: Clovis chair, $59, Structube
LEFT: Nia velvet pillow cover, 18in sq, $29.50US, Pottery Barn
RIGHT: Velvet cushion cover in light pink, 20in sq, $12.99, H&M Home
And speaking of lookalikes, here are two more:
Margaret Bernadette (Rossiter) Doiron and Margot Louisa (Doiron) Austin