Grace Bonney - Design*Sponge at Home

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SPONGE at home GRACE BONNEY to all of design*sponges readers: I hope this book will bring you the same joy, inspiration, and excitement that youve shared with the site over the years. Contents Grace Bonney was a kid when she started her blog. She was too young to realize how preposterously daunting her endeavor wasto create a community of style warriors who through imagination and hard work transformed their spaces, their stuff, and their lives. She was also too young to imagine how influential and important her blog would become. Design*Sponge has becomea daily (okay, hourly) must-read for me and the entire design world and has changed the rules of the game. It became the defining voice of design today, while remaining true to its optimistic, can-do ethos.

And now this tome that youre holding in your pawsfour hundred pages of tips, inspiration, and general gorgeousnessperfectly captures the mood of the day. It reminds us that design is about inspiration, not snobbism. Its about empowerment, self-expression, and pluck. I see Grace as a kindred spirit. When I quit my office job in 1993 (okay, full disclosure: I got fired from a string of jobs and was unemployable), I started making pottery and just hoped that if I stayed true to my creative vision of groovy and optimistic design, I would succeed. I had no idea what the hell I was doing, and it was really hard and isolating.

In the eighteen years since (oy vay, long time), Ive had some fab moments and some hard knocks. Its
been fun, but it would have been a whole lot easier if I had had Design*Sponge to show me the way. When Grace started Design*Sponge, she thought she was starting a design blog. But she wasnt just starting a blog, she was starting a revolution. And now the revolution has a bible. Viva Grace Bonney, viva Design*Sponge, viva la revolucin! introduction S itting in front of my computer seven years ago, I had no idea how my life would change when I clicked a button on the screen that said publish .

My blog Design*Sponge was born out of a desire to connect with people like myselfpeople who love design who want their homes to speak to who they really are. I have always believed that great design doesnt have to come with a high price tag or require a professional degree. I certainly didnt have either of those things when I started my blog, happily chatting to myself about some of my favorite things: a classic red Eames chair, some gorgeous shelving from France, and a handmade wooden coffee table that I had stumbled upon at a student design show. Even though no one joined in the discussion at first, I was thrilled to have an outlet to express my love of design and decorating. It made me feel less like the crazy girl in the room whos always going on about cool wallpaper. And yet, as it turns out, I wasnt alone.

Within weeks, my blog was eliciting comments and e-mails and I felt like I was connecting with a community that I didnt even know existed. We started having online conversations about the kinds of things I previously thought interested only me: a particularly fabulous fabric on a couch in a movie, the eye-catching wrapper on my favorite kind of candy (and how great would that color combination look in a room?), the wide plank floors in old historic homes that I wished were mine. These conversations turned into larger discussions on the website, where we shared tips about furniture and paint, and created an online support system filled with new friendships, ideas, and endless amounts of inspiration. Today, I wake up every morning and share news and inspiration from the design world with an audience that could fill Madison Square Garden. (How cool would it be if we could all meet up every day like that?) It is quite simply a dream job. I grew up in Virginia Beach, Virginia, with parents who always encouraged me to try new things. For me, that meant getting out of Virginia Beach as quickly as possible and escaping to New York University to study journalism.

As a freshman, I imagined an exciting future as a journalist. Id write for newspapers while living a life inspired by Sex and the Citys Carrie Bradshaw (complete with the amazing shoe collection). But those first few years didnt go quite as Id hoped. I found myself quickly disillusioned with the world of newspaper journalism, which was more bureaucratic and competitive than Id imagined. I moved back to Virginia, transferring to the College of William & Mary. Colonial Williamsburg wasnt the hotbed of activity that I had found in New York City, but it was this change of scenery that helped me to find myself.

After struggling to find a home in the colleges English department, I drifted into the art studio, where I learned printmaking and studied the history of art. In between classes, I would head back to my dorm, plop down on the couch, and watch my favorite TV show, TLCs Trading Spaces. At first, it was just a way to decompress. But I quickly found myself inspired not only to redecorate my dorm room but also to reach out to my professors with questions about the history of interior and furniture design. I was lucky to find a wonderful professor, Elizabeth Peak, who filled my arms with books about furniture design, decorating, and product design. She introduced me in particular to the work of several female designers like Ray Eames and Florence Knoll, whom I found infinitely inspiring. After graduation I moved back to New York and found a job at a small public relations firm that represented several companies in the furniture and design field.

One day, I was having brunch with my then boyfriend, Aaron (who is now my husband and partner at Design* Sponge). As I have been known to do, I was going on and on about the color palette in the room and how much I loved it. Thats when Aaron had an idea: Hey, have you ever thought about starting a blog about design? Maybe you could use it as a writing sample or a portfolio and use it to apply for a job at a magazine one day? A few hours of excited conversation later, I was on Blogger.com setting up my very first blog. I decided on the name Design*Sponge because thats what I wassomeone with an insatiable desire to absorb absolutely every tidbit about design that comes my way. Soon, I found myself writing my first blog post. My first few months of design blogging were relatively solitary.

There were only a handful of design blogs around, and the online design audience wasnt nearly as large as it is today. But I didnt care because I loved having an outlet where I could write about my passions. And the kind of design I was coveringaccessible to all, regardless of budgetwasnt being written about in any design and shelter magazines that I could find. The majority of my early posts were devoted to the design scene in my backyard of Brooklyn, New York. After work, I would throw my digital camera in my bag and go scout cool design shops and student shows, which I would then write about on the blog. The Brooklyn design scene was just starting to explode.