Co-Founder’s Diary: Emma Orlow

Although today is our premiere of The Do Not Enter Diaries, it is a little atypical of what you’ll usually be experiencing on our site. We’re kicking off DNED with two videos, Emily and Emma’s respective co-founder diaries, which will explain a bit more about them and their responsibilities as collaborators on The Do Not Enter Diaries. Tune in next Wednesday at 4PM for our first “official” bedroom diary.

DNED: Emma Orlow from The Do Not Enter Diaries on Vimeo.

Hello and welcome! My name is Emma Orlow and I am a co-founder here at The Do Not Enter Diaries.

I spend most of my time in my bedroom. Maybe its because I’m an only child, but I love nothing more than being in my room. Alone. Spending hours decorating, reorganizing, drawing, painting, writing, blogging, all from the comfort of my little hideout gives me great pleasure. And luckily, I am not the only one that takes pride in their bedroom.  My best friend, Emily and I started this project a year ago, at the time, never fully imagining the journey it would take us on, and how it would help us better understand ourselves and the bedrooms of teenagers around us. Though there were other projects out there when we began that focused on teenagers and even teenagers’ bedrooms, we wanted to create a project that not only honestly portrayed  teenagers’ thoughts and stories of their rooms, without staging or changing their habitats, but was also run by people of their same age, who were going through similar situations as the subjects in our bedroom diaries. We called our project The Do Not Enter Diaries because our videos take you inside a world that is often hidden from the public. So while our site is certainly meant for design inspiration of all varieties, we also see it as anthropological study. As you’ll see in our Co-founder’s Diaries, Emily and I have very different design preferences, but we both find meaning in making our rooms our own. We saw this as a trend among our own friends, too—the idea of taking pride in the teenage bedroom transcends all socio-economic and cultural barriers and we knew we wanted to record it. We hope you stay tuned in the coming months of The Do Not Enter Diaries, as we try and expand our notion of the teenage bedroom as it stands. It’s funny because this video was filmed over the summer, and I’ve since changed a few things about my personal appearance and that of my room, so it was a treat looking back.

It’s been a long time coming, but we’re excited to finally be able to premiere the bedroom diaries we’ve been filming over the last year. We’re also extremely excited to get more of you in on our project (to apply to be our next Do Not Enter Diary, please click here). Your participation and commentary is a vital part to sustaining The Do Not Enter Diaries. Over the coming months as we expand, there will be special edition days of our web series where we will be reaching out to you for music, photos, and other things about your bedroom. But in the meantime, please always send us ideas you have to contribute. And remember, there is no such thing as a boring bedroom. Each room tells a story about us, its just a matter of unearthing it.

We love you all!

Thanks for visiting.

- Emma

To learn more about Emily or me, please click here. To learn more about The Do Not Enter Diaries in general, please refer to our “About” page.

This video’s music is credited to “Sugar, Sugar” by The Archies. Available on iTunes.