Ep. 486: Alton Laday & Olivia Westbrooks

Caroline McDonald (0:02)

Welcome to How to Decorate from Ballard Designs, a weekly podcast all about the trials and triumphs of decorating and redecorating your home. I'm Caroline, I'm on the marketing team.

Taryn Schwartz (0:11)

And I'm Taryn, and I'm a product designer.

Liz Anderson (0:12)

I'm Liz, I head up the creative team.

Alton Laday (0:14)

We're your hosts.

Caroline McDonald (0:16)

Join the expert team at Ballard Designs for tips, tricks, and tales from interior designers, stylists, and other talents in the design world.

Taryn Schwartz (0:22)

Plus, we'll answer your decorating dilemmas at the end of each episode.

Liz Anderson (0:25)

We love answering your questions, so don't forget to email us at podcast at ballarddesigns.net.

Caroline McDonald (0:30)

Now on with the show.

Our guest today spent years as a marketing director inside the design industry before writing his first book, In the House, Celebrating America's Leading Black Interior Designers, which profiles 33 of America's most talented designers. The book traces the largely unrecorded history of black designers in America and follows the contemporary designers who are expanding the language of design today. Along with Alton Laday, we're welcoming back to the show, Interior Designer Olivia Westbrooks. You may know her from the Hallmark Channel's renovation show, Home is Where the Heart Is. We also did a house tour of one of her client homes on our house tour series on YouTube, and she's been on the podcast before. She started her firm in 2021 and has been recognized by House Beautiful, Architectural Digest, and Lux Magazine. Alton and Olivia, welcome to the show.

Olivia Westbrooks (1:19)

Hi, welcome. I feel like I'm a Ballard extension at this point.

Alton Laday (1:24)

Absolutely. Yes.

Olivia Westbrooks (1:26)

Perfect.

Caroline McDonald (1:27)

Happy to have you back, of course.

Olivia Westbrooks (1:29)

Happy to be back.

Caroline McDonald (1:31)

Okay. The book is beautiful, fascinating. It's full of heart.

Olivia Westbrooks (1:38)

Thank you.

Caroline McDonald (1:40)

I want you to start, Alton, by just telling our listeners about the background. What made you want to write this book? You've been working in the design industry, of course, for many years.

Alton Laday (1:50)

Sure.

Caroline McDonald (1:51)

Nothing like this really existed. So what was the nugget?

Alton Laday (1:57)

Well, the idea came to me during lockdown, because obviously I had time. When we encountered so many issues with the reckoning, which began with the Floyd's death and murder in Houston, I thought it would be really positive and wonderful to bring all of our success stories into a book and present it to everyone.

Caroline McDonald (2:34)

There's a huge array of designers in the book from all over the country, different styles, different ages, different backgrounds, and I was curious how you, how did you pick, how did you narrow down the list? Where did you even start?

Alton Laday (2:51)

Well, fortunately, I have a group of editors that I work with, and some of them are close friends.

I actually did an unscientific survey with them and asked for nominations. So from that, you know, I hit the Internet. I started doing my research. There is a lot of research with this book. And I spoke to a lot of people, did a lot of viewing of Instagram, and I came up with the designers that we chose.

Caroline McDonald (3:25)

Okay, you mentioned the research, and I would love for you to give everybody, Liz, is this where you were going?

Liz Anderson (3:31)

It's totally where I was going. I want to know more about the research that you've, that you went and dug into, because there's such an under-representation in interior design world of black representation. So tell me what research you found and what you found the most intriguing, helpful, all of it.

Alton Laday (3:55)

Yeah, sure, sure.

I have been a marketing director, but that was about 30 years ago. I have owned for the last 22 years, my own public relations firm, Alton Laday Media.

During the course of the 22 years of ALM, I've worked with design centers, designers, design businesses, design showrooms.

I actually had a great deal of reach into the design industry. Not just, and I live in California now, I'm in San Diego, but all over the country, really, editors and people that I have performed business with over the 22 years that helped me with the research and identifying the designers. There was one qualification. I wanted everyone to be, you know, and in some way photographed and in a national shelter magazine. So the work was very important, but so was the personality of the designer. Because I think, as you know, I really wanted to approach this from the standpoint of Tell Us About You, because I really wanted to know how they found design. You know, what makes you love design? What makes you a creative? You know, I wanted to know them. Of course, I wanted to know, you know, their education, you know, where they're working in design. We did talk about projects a bit, but I really wanted to focus it on the individual. And it was very successful. And I enjoyed it a good deal.