Madelynn Ringo
“It is OK to change directions and it is important to be nimble and opportunistic. It forces you to redefine yourself and apply your knowledge in a fresh way and that is when you will discover the most personal growth.”
WomenWhoBuild, meet Madelynn Ringo,
Madelynn’s journey in design is one to mirror. Madelynn started her career with André Balazs Properties, learning how to transform a brand into a physical space. She took this skill set and combined it with her incredible eye for design to bring Glossier, the online based beauty brand, to life as the companies experiential designer. Her work with Glossier has been highlighted in Architectural Digest. On top of her design work, Madelynn is the visionary behind Dinner with Designers, an intimate dinner party series that explores the stories and lives of influential designer through an evening of conversation in their homes.
Madelynn sat down with ArchNative (virtually of course) to discuss her journey in design, her design process for Glossier, and her vision for Dinner with Designers.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey in design?
I was born in Kentucky and grew up painting and making all sorts of things under the creative guidance of my mother, who is probably the most sparkly and creative person I know. I studied architecture and music performance (violin) at the University of Kentucky. During those years, there was a very special energy at The College of Design which was led by Dean Michael Speaks (now the dean at the School of Architecture at Syracuse University). I participated in many unique seminars and workshops that opened my eyes to different ways of using architectural thinking that were not limited to the discussion of buildings. For two consecutive years I traveled to New York to work at OMA through an internship program led by professor Kyle Miller. That’s when I fell in love with the energy of New York City.
My first job in New York was working on the design team at André Balazs Properties, known for building incredible hotel brands such as The Standard Hotel. It was not a typical “architecture” job but in retrospect, I learned so many valuable things related to transforming a brand into physical space and this has helped shape where my architectural interests are today. My second job was working for SO-IL, an architecture firm based in Brooklyn. This experience opened my eyes to the idea of creating an architectural narrative and they taught me how to make drawings in a way that expressed how a space would make people feel, as opposed to the emphasis being on what the wall types were.
That year I decided to pursue graduate school and chose Yale because the building (Rudolph Hall) made me feel so empowered and inspired. Plus the student models that were on display during my tour looked like high-end art sculptures and I wanted to make one!
You were most recently working as the Senior Retail Designer for Glossier, what did you learn from that experience and what’s next?
Working at Glossier was a dream! I was surrounded by such incredible thinkers and the creative opportunity was huge, not to mention wildly fun. We were redefining what a retail experience looked like and felt like.
“While I was technically designing a functioning “retail” space, this was not the main focus of the design process. It was more about building a unique narrative that was grounded in an understanding of the local community and the city’s landscape. ”
My role as one of the design leads was to translate the Glossier Brand into physical spaces and experiences while negotiating all the various team goals (construction, finance, marketing, retail) into a cohesive story. I started each project with a physical mood board and evolved it into a construction document set and the project was built in a matter of weeks. It was a highly creative process and very fast paced.
While I was technically designing a functioning “retail” space, this was not the main focus of the design process. It was more about building a unique narrative that was grounded in an understanding of the local community and the city’s landscape.
Through these projects, I was able to refine my design process. Each store represented a design narrative that was formed by a collection of references from art, architecture, history, fashion, and was molded together to create a community-specific retail experience and a unique translation of the Glossier brand. I created store experiences for cities across the US such as Miami, Boston, Austin, and Atlanta, and along the way, I learned so much about the people and stories that make these cities unique.
Retail will have to creatively evolve in order to stay relevant and innovate in a post-pandemic landscape.
I’ve spent a lot of time walking around neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Manhattan and have observed how businesses are adapting to the change. I’ve also noticed an impressive number of “for lease” signs. I personally sense a huge opportunity to bring life back into these empty spaces. It's a really interesting design problem and I’m excited to continue exploring what I have learned about creating impactful retail experiences to help reimagine these spaces.
What has been the biggest challenge in your career?
Learning how to trust my instincts as a designer. I am always overly critical of my own work! In reality, most people aren’t looking at your work with a magnifying glass and searching for the parts that you didn’t quite figure out how to resolve. It’s more important to move forward and learn from a mistake than get hung up on every little detail.
You are the Founder and curator for Dinner with Designers, can you tell us a little bit about this incredible event series?
I started Dinner With Designers in 2017. It is an event series that shares the stories of influential designers from around the world through an intimate conversation that takes place at the designer’s home. To date we have hosted 16 dinners in New York and Chicago with designers such as Archie Lee Coats of Playlab, the artists Sarah Oppenheimer and architectural historian Anthony Vidler. The project developed shortly after I finished grad school when my peers and I found ourselves with a lot of questions about how to build a career as a designer. I wanted to learn from people that had figured it out already but I was envisioning a conversation that felt more relatable and more casual than the typical lecture setting that already existed.
Dinner With Designers at the home of Archie Lee Coates
A dinner party is so much more personal and fun and I’ve always been drawn to hosting gatherings and curating a group of people together. The dinners are hosted at the designer’s home and this is perhaps the most important ingredient of the project. You get to step inside the personal and private space of the designer and this is what sets the tone of the conversation; the evening may start as a group of strangers but we leave as friends with a shared experience and memory. The home of the designer has always been a topic of interest, and through this platform, you get to experience it first hand as opposed to simply reading about it or seeing the photographs.
Each conversation is unique and takes on its own direction, but we always talk about failure. To quote Jerome Hafford from one of our early dinners, “In other fields, people are more secure with failure because that’s part of business.” Failure in the design industry is often the project that you don’t feel comfortable putting on your website or that didn’t turn out as planned. But in each of those experiences, you learned something that helped you grow and become a better designer and it is part of what defines your specific journey. It can be really helpful to share those failures openly with others so that they can learn to be more comfortable with their own.
Building Dinner With Designers has been a really rewarding personal experience as well. The best part is that it has created a project that allows me to collaborate with my friends. I started the dinners in New York but we have since expanded to Chicago in 2019 and this year we will also be expanding to Los Angeles.
Dinner With Desgners at the home of Keller Easterling
The pandemic presented us with a large hurdle given that being inside with oth is no longer favorable and in March we had to cancel all of our planned dinners for the unforeseeable future, but this made room for developing other components of the project and we are excited to finally launch the website and a series of virtual and outdoor dinners this Fall. Stay tuned!
What is some advice that you have for women entering the field?
That it is OK to change directions and that it is important to be nimble and opportunistic. It forces you to redefine yourself and apply your knowledge in a fresh way and that is when you will discover the most personal growth.
When I was just beginning, I often feared that if I wasn’t working at a famous architecture firm and making buildings, that somehow I had failed to succeed. But I have realized that an education in architectural thinking gives you the tools to solve many types of complex problems in a highly creative and unique way that is not limited to a floor plan.
My second piece of advice is to have conversations with mentors. Find a creative thinker that is doing exciting work and learn from them how they’ve approached their own career and the hurdles they have navigated. A great way to find mentors is to be social and connect with others across the creative landscape. My hope is that Dinner With Designers can be one of those gatherings that fosters mentorship and creative conversation.