Designer Spotlight: AFD
Ariel Johnson founded Ariel Fox Design on the basis of creating spaces with intention, purpose, and wonderment. With a background in law and fashion, Ariel uses her unique design perspective to bring imagination and ingenuity to her projects. Based in southern California, Ariel Fox Design specializes in multifamily residences and hospitality, designing sophisticated spaces full of color and personality. With an emphasis on collaboration, the all-women team is from all over the world, providing AFD with a variety of cultural influences and outlooks. We sat down with Ariel to learn more about her path to becoming an interior designer and her design philosophy.
Ariel’s journey to becoming an interior designer was quite the unconventional route. From a very young age, “I actually believed my purpose in life was to be an attorney,” Ariel told us. While working as a litigation paralegal at a high power law firm in Manhattan, Ariel decided to pivot and enrolled in school for fashion design. Having always loved fashion, she was introduced to the fashion industry during her time as a model in her teens. One day, a professor who remembered her from runway shows pulled her aside and asked her “What are you doing here?”. Doubting that fashion was the right path for Ariel, he recommended she pursue interior design. Of course, the professor was none other than Tim Gunn, who rose to fame afterwards on the show Project Runway. Ariel moved to Los Angeles to attend Art Center College of Design and despite her challenging program, fell in love with interior design. She explained, “interior design was pulling the creative- the color, pattern, forms- everything that I resonated with from fashion into a much more stable working environment, so it just felt better for me.” After graduating, Ariel started working in hospitality and absolutely loved it- “I never looked back after that.”
AFD creates vibrant and lively spaces with stories woven into their design. Ariel explained to us, “I started the company with this idea of wonderment and how a space can really change how you feel. Personally, when I don’t know how a space is impacting me, that’s where the magic comes from. It becomes a very personal exploration.” Completing large multi-family projects, Ariel realized that a unifying narrative gives her projects continuity and cohesion. “In the fashion world, every collection had this narrative story, this origin, this thread that the entire collection pulls from and we do the same with our projects.” For AFD’s Magnolia project, they were inspired by the magnolia flower, “a symbol of feminine sweetness, beauty, purity, and nobility.” The themes and the visual image of the flower guided us to create an art package that encapsulated their vision of “crafted eclectic,” including a velvet diptych of a magnolia flower and multiple mixed media gallery walls.
To determine the theme or vision for a project, AFD uses placemaking. Placemaking focuses on the connection between people and the spaces they inhabit in their community. Ariel explained, “Every geographic area has its own thumbprint of uniqueness that we love to celebrate.” The team will start with the location of the project and do a deep dive into the market. After analyzing the renters and their hobbies or interests, they will use their research to decide on a narrative for the project. Their goal is to honor the local community, creating an accessible yet exciting space. “It’s a play of pushing the creative and wonderment and fantasy, but also making it attainable at the same time. You want people to feel good, welcomed, and comfortable.”
AFD does not hold back when it comes to artwork, often choosing our most bright and colorful pieces for their projects. “Color really impacts your feeling when you walk into a space and that’s why art is so important- it’s an opportunity to go really big with color.” Claiming their use of color as one of their “secret talents”, AFD creates balance with color by using it in an elegant and timeless way so that it doesn’t feel trendy or garish. Ariel recounted, “At one of our projects in Long Beach, we had a hand blown blue tile on the wall where we hung your resin artworks, the Radiant Squares, so it was this creamsicle orange-y color on an indigo blue wall. I felt like I was eating a visual dessert, it was so good.” We had been given the prompt of creating an “underwater dream” for this room of the project and were amazed by the visual AFD created for us in just a few words.
The project narrative helps guide AFD in curating artworks for their projects, but they always look for certain elements in their art packages. “We like to have a variety of media with color, texture, and sculpture, just to have a nice mix of elements in the space. And scale is really important.” A fan of our gallery walls, Ariel often recommends a grouping of artworks instead of one large statement piece. “It takes more talent and effort to put together a gallery wall with different frames and collected art pieces, it’s dynamic.” Visual Contrast has even influenced AFD’s art selection process, as Ariel recounted, “Years ago you sent us samples of the colors that we were using in our art pieces which is something we never had when selecting art off the screen. That was really another level of refinement and you really changed our studio and art selection process from that. It’s a real holistic effort- we do that for everything else in our project, so now we’re doing that for the art as well.”
