Emerging–New York School of Interior Design’s Digital Natives Are Posting with Fun and Intention

NYSID students’ approaches to Instagram are as diverse as their design sensibilities, demonstrating there’s more than one right way to market yourself as an interior designer.

As students begin to transform into interior designers through their studies at NYSID, they’re thinking strategically about how to use their social media accounts to find a design community and build their reputations. NYSID’s digital natives have grown up documenting their lives on social media, and now they’re using social media to express their evolving aesthetics. Rather than treating social media as a chore, these students take pleasure in sharing new knowledge, and making meaningful connections along the way. The curriculum at NYSID is rigorous, and students expressed that they don’t usually have time to engage regularly on more than one social media outlet. The consensus among the students we spoke to is that they hone in on Instagram as it’s the most useful for designers.

Negotiate the Line Between Personal & Professional

Says Dahiana Peña (@itsdahiana), a first year MFA-1 candidate, who also serves as social media coordinator for NYSID’s Graduate Student Association and who formerly worked in corporate marketing, “There was a conversation among my friends last week, after class, about whether we were going to create a distinct design account or evolve our own personal accounts to reflect our professional identities. It became clear that I needed my personal and professional identities to merge on social media, because interior design is a way of life.” NYSID students are catching on to the fact that their lives are often a part of their brand in social media marketing as interior designers. On @itsdahiana, Peña shares selfies with loved-ones along with her enthusiasm for the Hermès Home fabrics collection in the Dedar Milano showroom Keisuke Omata (@keisuke.o213), a graphic designer from Tokyo in his first year of NYSID’s MFA-1 program, is moving in a different direction, removing his personal content, such as shots of his futsal team, from his account and centering it around the concept of shape. He wants it to have a uniform look, and comments, “I’m not into sharing my private life. I think of my Instagram as an evolving portfolio for both my graphic design work and my interior design work.” Omata has started an additional account with graphic designer Kei Maeyama, for a digital magazine they’ve created called 811 (@811magazine), intended to reveal the design secrets behind beautiful spaces in New York, with issues devoted to places like Sushi Lin and Public. Sydney Dalis Stein, co-founder of Wimze Digital, a social-first digital agency, says, “Instagram is a first impression platform portfolio, and you want to make sure that this impression is the right one.” She believes the ideal way to approach Instagram is to register a separate business account, because business accounts receive specific insights into how posts perform. However, building a business account from the ground up can be time consuming, so she says, “If you already have a strong following on your personal account, the best strategy is to shift your personal account to a more intentional voice that reflects your business ethos and visual aesthetic. Even a personal brand can work toward receiving the Instagram ‘blue badge,’ which would give validity to your business.”

Consider Longevity of a Post

MFA-1 student Gisselle Sánchez (@gissellesanchez_) uses Instagram Stories in a more personal way than she uses her main Instagram profile, using it to develop her design identity. IG Stories disappear after 24 hours. Because the posts fade away in a day and as they go directly to the top of the feeds of followers, she’s more apt to use Stories to let people into profoundly personal moments of her life, such as the beauty of a traditional Honduran Punta ritual at a beloved relative’s funeral. She feels that her Stories build engagement, especially because they show the interplay between her life and her designs.

Tag Design Idols

With a background in corporate marketing from her previous career, Dahiana Peña knows that tagging the people you admire is important. She says, “Every time I hear someone speak at NYSID, a new door of knowledge opens for me, and I use social media to keep the door open. Cindy Allen (@thecindygram), editor in chief of Interior Design, just spoke here. Even someone of her stature appreciates it if you take a picture with her and tag her. The design industry is heavily networked. If you don’t have a way to start a conversation, it’s difficult to get out there.” Gisselle Sánchez had the opportunity to take a photograph with her design hero, Kelly Wearstler (@ kellywearstler), whom she also tagged. Recently, Wearstler has been liking Sánchez’s posts in return. Sydney Dalis Stein of Wimze Digital advises her smaller clients to “start by engaging with highly targeted micro-influencers, people with 4,000 to 15,000 followers, so you don’t get lost in the abyss. Make a list of micro-influencers who speak to your visual aesthetic and values. Be genuine and people will respond.”

Engage with People Who Inspire You

BFA student Atique Rahman (@atiq2a) immigrated to the United States from Bangladesh to study engineering when he was 17 years old. However, he began to despise engineering, and dropped out of his first bachelor’s program after a couple of semesters. Even though he knew “nobody” in the design world, and had little contact with the design community in the United States, he had always wanted to be a designer, and so he eventually made his way to NYSID after supporting himself for years. He started with the BID program, later transferring to the AAS, and eventually, to the BFA. An avid design fan, he made it his habit to follow the creators of designs that caught his eye on Instagram, including the posts of David Scott, Shawn Henderson, Drew McGukin and Patrick McGrath. He even had the opportunity to meet Patrick McGrath while the well-known designer was taking a course at NYSID. Rahman connected to McGrath on Instagram, commented on his posts and chatted with him about designs through messaging. When McGrath posted a job opportunity for a design assistant last November, Rahman applied and got the paid internship.

Use Social to Deepen Understanding

Dahiana Peña says, “As I go to talks, panels, exhibitions and studio tours through school, professors often throw out names and my first instinct is to go to their Instagram feeds and start following them so that I can learn more about them. My class went to Flavor Paper to watch handmade wallpaper being made in Brooklyn, and I posted about my experience, and now I’m learning so much about this craft.”

Apply Specific Hashtags

General tags, such as #InteriorDesign or #InteriorArchitecture, are important, but even more important are specific hashtags, what Sidney Dalis Stein calls “micro-hashtags.” Gisselle Sánchez uses 20 to 30 hashtags (Instagram’s limit) on each of her posts, some of them as specific as #GothicRevivalArchitecture or #Neon. These hashtags help people with similar interests and tastes find their posts.

Make Time for a Branding Exercise

Social media expert Sydney Dalis Stein says the most important advice she gives is, “Figure out your place in the industry. What do you offer that is unique? Map out your values ahead of time, and use those core values to guide what you post, how you post it and whom you tag.”

You Can’t Fake Passion

Perhaps the best lesson one can take from the social media accounts of these emerging interior designers is not a tip but a tone. Their original feeds are about their unbridled enthusiasm for design, an excitement that draws in fans of the field.