Design Guide Online Editorial

Most of us love looking at and gleaning inspiration from the colorful, glossy pictures from design professionals who've won an award (or a few). But all we see is that finished product frozen in a frame. Do you ever catch yourself wondering how they won; how many hours they poured in; what inspired them; what sort of steps led to this point; what is the story?

Debbie Baxter, Baxter Design Group, gives us a glimpse at each of her three projects. Two of them were for S.A.S. (based in San Antonio, but are scattered throughout the nation). The San Antonio location won first place in the retail category. 

Photo by Matthew Niemann

The San Antonio Shoe Company (S.A.S.) manufactures handmade shoes for working people. A majority of their clientele are medical professionals and anyone who is on their feet all day and needs a comfort shoe. S.A.S. has gotten more progressive in their shoe styles. They wanted a store with an ambiance that reflected the progressive, more stlyish shoe style; a place where people could feel hip and fashionable when they shopped, and not feel their need for a comfortable shoe was a handicap.

They hired the Baxter Design Group to create this new look for them.

"We started out at their anchor store with this theme of fashion-forward, so that’s what’s reflected in this interior of the dark, grey-washed wooden floors with almost commercial-looking carpet, which looks very mod and very hip," said Baxter. "We used a color scheme of teal, yellow, blue, green and these huge punches of white (white casework, white ceilings, big white lights) to give it that 'WOW' factor."

Overall the theme was crisp modern. They cleaned up the somewhat cluttered and overstocked S.A.S. displays, and added fun black and white photographs of graphics that came from archives of shoe-making and cobblers, which told the story of the shoes. There are also photos of their senior level cobblers that actually make the shoes in their factories.

Baxter decided to use a lot of leather throughout the store (upholstery, etc.), since the shoes are made from leather. The architect on the job, as well as the man who designed the case displays, was Roy Braswell from Braswell Architecture.

"Our goal was to give the interior of S.A.S.’s stores a very new, fashion-forward (S.A.S.-sy look) before the introduction of the new product," she said.

Photo courtesy of Baxter Design Group

Her other S.A.S. store award-winning project was in Austin. It won second place in the retail category.

"Here we were going for an industrial factory theme to fit in more with the Austin vibe," said Baxter. "Note the darker wood floors with Chicago brick, pendant lights resembling factory lights and red leather sofa."

Photo courtesy of Baxter Design Group

They also incorporated the same idea of making sure to tell the story behind the making of these comfort shoes.

(Before) 

Photo courtesy of Baxter Design Group

This project was on a quite different scale than her other two award-winning projects. This was in a place on the opposite side of the nation: New York City. Baxter won second place in the category of contemporary residential under 3500 square feet. This apartment she did a total gut renovation on is on 5^th Avenue, and took her four years. The client did a total 180 degrees in her style preference, according to Baxter. Just take a look at the "before" and "after" photographs. The theme: modern simplicity. 

(After)

Photo courtesy of Baxter Design Group

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by: Rachel Duke