This June, as ever, the commercial design community met in Chicago for Neocon 2014, the largest conference and design exposition for commercial interiors in North America. I talked with Todd Custer of Custer about what the conference means for him and for the rest of his staff.
First of all – the most important question – what was the best swag they gave out this year?
Just a couple of cool bags, but that’s about it!
How many people in the design industry go to Neocon?
Custer has twenty people going down, but they will be joining 40,000 other designers and architecture professionals. It’s an enormous conference, held at the Merchandise Mart in downtown Chicago. The floor space is huge; there are fifteen floors of displays and booths for our designers to browse and get ideas from. It’s great for us because it’s so close, just over in Chicago. Our staff can carpool down with each other, spend the day, and come back with a wealth of new ideas.
I read that Neocon has a million square feet of showroom and exposition space. That’s a lot of walking. Are there particular areas of design your staff focus more on?
Commercial design itself covers a lot of ground, and our staff does work on projects in many industries – healthcare, education, corporate and retail, to name a few. Many of the products being showcased are applicable for general adaptation, and it’s up to our designers in how to best incorporate them for our clients.
While Neocon is energizing and inspiring, the best part of the conference is bringing our new product and product application ideas back to our clients. Taking it all to the marketplace is the goal. The products themselves are often pretty amazing, but incorporating them into our projects and making them work for our clients as they are designed to – that’s the great part.
Is your Michigan or Midwestern clientele affected differently than similar businesses in different geographical locales?
Different parts of the country have different design trends. The West Coast is always more progressive. Think of Google and the funky workspace ideas they’ve incorporated for their tech employees. The East Coast is a good mix of both. The Midwest is somewhere in the middle. Trends will start in the West and East in NYC and move to the Midwest slowly over time. Grand Rapids is more conservative than other parts of the Midwest in terms of space and design.
What design trends have you seen make their way across the country?
The open plan, open workspace with shared or collaborative areas and “lounges” eventually made their way here from the West Coast. That’s the most recent idea to really take hold. Technology is also becoming a driving factor in Design. Technology, of course, changes all the time, so it’s harder to know if you’re on the forefront of it or not, if you’re not familiar with all the groundbreaking stuff out there. We think we are a head of the game when it comes to innovative technology integration. We have built a strong Technology division to help support these trends.
Why is all of this relevant to West Michigan?
If Grand Rapids wants to invest in attracting a creative class and building its mental capital, it must adopt some of the workspace trends that are coming into our market. The best young talent coming out of college does not want to sit in a cubicle and work 8 hours a day staring at one screen. They need collaborative surroundings and up-to-date communication technology. In order to be competitive with other cities, we, as employers, need to be willing to offer cutting edge surroundings.
That’s a tall order. Until fairly recently Grand Rapids was not known for being edgy or innovative, and, as you said, it’s still a fairly conservative community.
I think we’re up for the challenge. Grand Rapids is changing and building, flexing its creative muscles more all the time. Workplace design is just another piece of our complex and changing puzzle.
Neocon 2014 in Chicago