Inspiring Conversations with Martine Ilana of Temescal Creative Agency

Today we’d like to introduce you to Martine Ilana.

Martine, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I am the Principal Designer of the sustainable design agency: Temescal Creative: https://www.temescalcreative.com along with the founder & designer of the newly launched La Lune Jewelry https://www.lalunelove.com. Each business is unique in its focus but connected in its core values: sustainable design, manufacturing & installation.

My entire life I have been designing objects and spaces; One of my 1st memories at four years old is rainbow bedazzling my parents’ home phone, and to both of their horror and excitement, realizing that I needed to find a channel for my creativity! I attended Cranbrook-Kingswood, which is a community & school founded in the Arts & Crafts movement designed in its entirety by Eliel Saarinen and so was surrounded by art and design in my most formative years.

When I was 19 years old, I moved to South Africa to study art, and once I returned to the United States, I was so inspired by my time away that I created a watch brand as an independent study for my final year of university. It was from that collection that I formally broke into the design industry and was able to land my 1st job out of college in NYC as a timepiece designer. I worked at a licensing firm during the day and designed/operated my own brand at night – constantly hustling to get the word out about my collection!

I’ve since then lived and worked as a designer and business owner in Detroit, Michigan; NYC; Boulder, Colorado and Los Angeles, California. In each location and career position, I have been struck by the complex ways of managing the ‘over production’ or extra inventory remaining after the items I have designed were manufactured or installed. Subsequently, I chose to pivot my businesses and focus on how interiors and products can be designed in a healthier way.

I am most proud of the work that has been achieved over the last two years by Temescal. Many of the conceptual projects are now built, bags created, concepts in motion for sampling and into production. Additionally recently I have completed a certification in Healthy Building Materials from the Parson’s New School and am currently finishing up a Sustainable Design Certification from Pratt in Brooklyn.

My story is a constant evolution on how strategic design has the capacity to positively impact climate change.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
My journey has been diverse in its path and complicated. As an entrepreneur, I have learned to embrace the constant incoming challenges as I know that with each detour or hiccup, it will provide me a valuable lesson and will end up teaching me how to be a better business owner, designer and manage my client relations with more transparency and care.

As you know, we’re big fans of Temescal Creative Agency. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Temescal Creative is a Sustainable Design Agency that designs spaces and develops products which have a positive impact on the global environment.

There is a different way to design when one must consider a building or product’s end of life. This shift in perspective changes the materials which are picked from the very beginning. This change of design perspective is our focus:

“Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

How to achieve this balance within a client’s timeline and cost parameters is ultimately our service offering.

Temescal has a few specialties:

1) Renovating residential or commercial spaces. We try to keep the embodied energy of a structure in place as much as possible and then re-finish the surfaces with the ever evolving healthy materials. ie: hemp products, porcelain tiles, cork flooring, plant-based paints.

2) Our other specialty is creating upcycled or circular-designed products. Creatively we take stock of any overages from a previous production run and strategically collaborate with companies to develop new products such as furniture, handbags, accessories, or craft kits as an example from those overages. We rescue dead-stock materials and transform them into beautiful new objects!

Recently I have launched this amazing brand named: ‘La Lune’ which takes dead-stock semi-precious stones, vintage diamond components, and recycled glass beads and transforms them into new jewelry styles that are both gift-able and collectible. I also am really proud of our circular design program that accepts back used jewelry to re-route these pieces out of a landfill:

https://lalunelove.com/pages/circular-design-return-program

What sets Temescal apart is its personal client relationships and depth of experience. We have a strong creative network across the US that has worked with both large and small organizations and is very hands-on and familiar with working on complex and sometimes daunting projects that other firms have a hard time taking on. We manage every step for a client from concept, development, sampling to production and installation. Often clients come to us with ideas but are unclear how to launch, we can support this in an easy and fun way so that the process is not overwhelming in any way.

We are known for being meticulous in our communication, organizational processes and timelines. Importantly, our relationships are ultimately the most important part of our business. Designing is fun, and creating something as a collaboration can be life-changing, so Temescal Creative’s values are to be kind, clear and transparent with each project that we work on.

Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
I believe in ‘Success by Proximity’ versus ‘Luck’ and I try my very best to be genuine and authentic in my business relationships in order to collaborate and associate with those who I admire and respect. Any type of ‘Bad Luck’ that I may have experienced, with some perspective has ended up being the best thing that could have happened eventually.

Pricing:

• La Lune’s Jewelry ranges from $48 – $125 online

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.temescalcreative.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/temescal_creative/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TemescalCreativeDesign
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martineilana

Image Credits
© Christopher Payne/Esto