Meet Christle Tan, our April User of the Month. Not only did she win Best Video in our 2018 CET Designer Awards, but she is also Project Designer at bkm OfficeWorks.
Before the fame of being a CET Design award winner, she graduated with a BFA in Interior Design at the Design Institute of San Diego. Her passion for pursuing commercial interior design led her to the furniture industry and bkm OfficeWorks. Nine years ago, she started as an intern for bkm and has been growing and working full-time with the company ever since.
Her favorite part about design is that it is powerful. “Design can problem solve, inspire, help create a culture and a lifestyle, create memories/history, start a trend/end a trend, create emotions and never stop evolving. It’s not that we (designers) are powerful, but I believe that the gift we have, we are to use it to help each other propel for the best life.”
Christle says that she has been using CET Designer since the beginning, nine years ago. She says CET Designer has enhanced communication with clients. A lot of clients have been requiring live design, and with CET Designer, this has reduced a lot of back and forth between the client. This saves everyone time and it is easier to visualize and understand both the products and space better. One of the biggest challenges of switching over to CET Designer has been having to work with legacy projects that contain old part numbers and symbols that are no longer valid.
In 2018, Christle and her team were presented a bid. She knew that she had less than a minute to present and generate excitement and curiosity about the project—almost like a good movie trailer. So, she challenged herself with the task of making a fly through using CET Designer. Not only did it land bkm the bid, but Christle also won 1st Place video at the CET Designer Awards. To celebrate, she decided to share the prize money with the people who made her the designer that she is today.
Christle’s tip for using CET Designer’s Movie studio is to pan slowly and steadily so that the eye can capture more detail. In her winning video she used the stationary camera more than the camera path tool. She said her secret is taking notes on how HGTV pans a camera through the space to help the eye capture and remember certain details. “It’s good to show how spacious or architecturally beautiful the space can be, but we also need to emphasize the furniture.”
One thing that has helped Christle is her passion for photography. She has been able to apply the same photography skills when designing, rendering, 360 panoramas and fly throughs. She encourages every designer to make time between work to play and grow.