Get In Here! The Max Humphrey Interview.

We talk with interior designer Max Humphrey about how he stumbled into design work, his new book LODGE, and his new companion coffee label that brews up nicely on the Ratio Four.

When Max Humphrey returned to LA he’d changed his mind. He’d moved out from his hometown in New Hampshire near the Vermont border a few years prior, plunging himself into the TV and Film industry and happily splitting rent with as many roommates as possible as long as he didn’t have to sleep standing up. But after touring with his punk band for two years (hitting every single state in the US), which is to say, after spending 24 months bouncing from Motel 6 to Motel 6 sleeping five dudes to a room, he was ready for a space of his own.

So, instead of doing the roommates-but-wow-this-feels-almost-like-a-frat-house thing when he got back to town, he took what little cash he had saved up from tour and plunked down first and last for his own apartment. The band had run its course, and Max wasn’t sure he was ready to jump back into the grinder of Hollywood production and he found himself spending a lot of time in his new place.

Oh, and when he’d left for tour he did what punk musicians are required to do: he’d sold everything he couldn’t fit in the van. With a fresh space all to himself and plenty of time on his hands, Max found himself returning to the flea markets and vintage shops scattered throughout the City of Angels. With limitations of both wallet and floorspace, he had to get creative–finding pieces that could serve multiple functions, or work in different corners of the apartment.

‘While I was supposed to be looking for a job, I was nesting,’ he tells me, ‘I didn’t know the term interior design but that’s what I was doing.’ He threw up paint, kissed his security deposit goodbye and ripped up the carpet, brought in his vintage finds, and made his space his very own.

As Max tells it, this was his lightbulb moment. He loved every aspect of the projects he set for himself, so much so that they started to eclipse his love for film production, at least as a job. So he asked himself, what’s the job version of making my apartment look cool?

His feedback loop was also encouraging. Whenever his friends would come over, someone would comment about what he’d done new with his space and how great it felt to be there. Soon Max was scouring design blogs, buying bins of discarded Architectural Digest magazines, and set about making himself into a thing he’d never even heard of: an interior designer. When he saw an entry-level job at a design firm listed on Craigslist (God, the early 2000s were magical), he applied and his hunger to learn took over.

He had a sense, even early on, that he wasn’t going to learn CAD better than the senior designers at his firm, but that was because it didn’t interest him. Through one of those lucky twists of fate, his boss brought him along to client meetings as a notetaker. Needless to say, it was an education.

Max worked hard, he did all the grunt work asked of him, and his hunger kept pushing him to learn more, try more, experience more. All the while he was honing his own aesthetic perspective, until one day he realized he was ready for the next step.

It was around 2016, Max pulled up stakes again and moved to Portland, Ore. immediately feeling at home. The lumberjack sensibilities of northern New England mapped onto the Portland vibe nicely. There’s a similar seasonality to the NE and the PNW, a similar desire to bring the outdoors in but without the weather. For Max it couldn’t have been more perfect.

Max opened his own interior design studio and set to work building a client list in a new city. As he got a feel for Portland, it didn’t take long for him to start office hours alongside at least ⅔ of the city’s creative class: in cafes. Coffee and cafe culture became the backdrop for Max’s creative process as he threw himself into any jobs that came his way.

Cut to eight years later and Max’s business is thriving. He’s no longer taking just any job (he mostly focuses on whole-house interior design for new builds or remodels as well as a slew of commercial projects), but his punk-rock DIY energy still fuels him. He’s built relationships with several of his vendors who like his work so much that collaborations are kicking out in all directions–from wallpaper to fabrics to standing mats.

Once you hear that he grew up in New Hampshire and now lives in Portland, you quickly understand Max’s aesthetic. Modern Americana, he calls it. And that’s exactly what it feels like. It’s nostalgia + fir trees + modern lines and it’s amazing.

Early in the pandemic of 2020, Max found himself being a pretend travel agent. He couldn’t travel, pretty much none of us could, but he kept finding himself planning trips–not pie in the sky billionaire trips that would never happen anyway, but trips that he would actually take if it wasn’t for lockdown.

And thus, LODGE was born. LODGE, as the subtitle tells us, is an ‘Indoorsy Tour of America’s National Parks.’ It’s Max’s second book (Modern Americana being the first), and it’s a coffee table book turned love letter to some of the great historic lodges in America’s most beautiful places.

Max and his team of photographers, David Tsay and Rob Schanz, would descend on a lodge, get their photos, and then scurry away to piece together what they got before heading to the next lodge a month later. It was a passion project and a dream come true but there was just one problem. The coffee was …not up to par. The gang quickly geared up and started making pour-overs on the road, or aeropress in whichever lodge’s great room, using beans from craft roasters they could find on the road.

And again, coffee became the frame for Max’s creative canvas. As the book was taking its final form the Max and Rob would reminisce about all the coffee sessions that went into it, another idea sparked, and Lodge Coffee was born. Their first roast, the are we there yet? blend, is roasted by Portland’s own Coava Coffee. For Max, it brews perfectly on the Ratio Four, flooding him with all those pour-over memories from the road, beckoning him on to the next journey.