We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nicole Day a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Nicole , thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?
I’ve been working really hard my entire life. There was a lot of disfunction in my household growing up. I distracted myself with ballet, training intensely from the time I was ten years old into college. Ballet takes extreme dedication, a lot of hard work, and time. After school I would come home for a short nap and then off to the ballet studio where I would stay most nights training and rehearsing until 9pm. I would come home, exhausted. Soak my feet in a bucket of ice water while eating my dinner, alone. Head to my room and work on homework until around 1 am. Wake up the next morning and do it all over again- 6 days a week! It was such hard work and required such devotion. For better or worse, ballet is defined by an elevated standard where the dancer is constantly striving for the institution’s established ideal of perfection. That sounds so corny, but it is so true. It puts so much pressure on the dancer to contort and conform to those ideals, but it becomes engrained in the pursuit. After my pre-professional career in ballet ended, due to stress fractures in my feet, I suppose I sought to apply that same diligence and work ethic to my undergraduate work, which transcribed to my masters degree, and now to professional practice. I annoy myself most of the time- caring too much, going the extra mile, striving for some semblance of “perfection”, I guess. I have to actively check this part of my character- nobody likes a nagging perfectionist!
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
Established 5 years ago, Day & Day Company is a transdisciplinary design office based in Atlanta, GA focused on landscape architecture and residential interior design. We have a community driven ethic, where most projects seek to find that connection to one another, to nature and natural systems, and how to engage in telling the story of place as distinct human experience. I lead the practice as Creative Director and I’ve always been very interested in time- backwards and forwards. Time is the common thread that connects us all and Day & Day Company is a direct reflection of that- our collaboration as designers with time and space. We have some really exciting and important projects in the public sector kicking off in 2024. We just completed construction documents for a very thoughtful affordable housing project with architecture firm eightvillage in English Avenue slated to break ground this summer!
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Don’t be afraid of failure. Remain open to receive. Don’t give up! I think these are the three mantras I’ve used to help me lean in to the hard times. Often, I feel like I am jumping off a cliff not knowing where I’ll land. I think as long as you are confident that there is a landing, some where, down there… it is a comforting notion that helps keep things light. I think visualizing that- the controlled falling- helps to maintain your wits in a space where not much is in your control. The only thing you have control over is your work and how you execute it, and as long as you stay honed in on that truth, failure is not possible! I also always try to remain in a state of openness. Open to receive new ideas and ways of thinking about things. It keeps my creative energy active and nimble. Times get tough, really really tough! But, don’t give up! I would say it takes a good five years to build some momentum. Maybe it’s quicker for some folks, which is fantastic. I’ve been climbing up the small business owner mountain for five years, and I’m finally starting to descend the other side.
If you knew you only had a decade of life left, how would you spend that decade?
If I only had ten years left I would probably keep pouring myself into my work- hopefully working on impactful projects both socially and environmentally. I would also spend a good portion of each year traveling with my family- exploring and adventuring across the globe. When I was 22/23 I spent 6 months traveling around the world by myself in search of authentic cultural experiences and compelling landscape vernacular. It would be so cool to retrace my steps, but as a seasoned adult and through a professional’s lens.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.dayandday.company
- Instagram: @dayandday.company
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-ives-day-887b0a2a/
Image Credits
Drew Perlmutter Heidi Harris
