Nicole Arnold On Five Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career As A Commercial Designer

Athalia Monae
6 min readOct 23, 2024

Thank you for joining us today! Can you share the story of what led you to pursue a career in commercial design?

My commercial design experience was a natural evolution from my developed residential business. I thought, “if I can make homes look great, and I have a strong marketing sense and ability, I can make businesses look great and subliminally communicate the brand’s image.” Commercial design is a nice break from residential design since it’s more objective and typically carries fewer emotionally driven decisions.

What’s the most interesting or amusing experience you’ve had in your career so far, and what lesson did you learn from it?

I found it very interesting how we proved to ourselves we could design an entire 30,000SF office in Long Island, NY from Dallas, TX completely remote. Because of the pandemic limiting the typically planned personal contact, we found ways to work around the obstacles and design virtually. We never stepped foot into the office until installation day, almost 11 months later. And, the execution went just as smoothly and according to plan as any of our local projects! We’ve since done two other remote design projects for the same company in different locations and it continues to be a very…

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Athalia Monae
Athalia Monae

Written by Athalia Monae

Journalist and writer, product creator, published author, advocate for Feed Our Starving Children, and Founder of Alahta Mane Essentials.

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