Design Life

I started designing on a desktop computer, like most people, quite a while ago. All kid stuff aside (let’s fast-forward from my Kid Pix days at dad’s desk). My first *real* computer was the original iMac. It was the aqua one, and I got it before I even knew there would be colors. Something I was very salty about for years to come. How Sweet-16-an-Escalade-isn’t-good-enough of me. Anyway, this is the first computer that I ever opened Photoshop on, and the first computer that made me realize I wanted to be a designer.

As the legend goes, my grandpa had gotten a copy of Photoshop 5.0 and handed it off to me because I was known throughout the family as “artsy” (read: drew #2 pencil portraits of the band Hanson on printer paper). I was in a band myself at the time and spent countless hours editing photos of this band. I especially enjoyed adding a blue glow from the lighting effect palette and including our name at the bottom of the image in the lovely Comic Sans, long before anyone knew there was going to be a stigma - or maybe I was just out of the loop. Hey, it was 1998, what can I say?

Anyway, let’s jump forward again. I’ve always had a sort of haphazard workspace. In the aforementioned situation, my iMac sat nearly wobbling off of a desk from the 40’s that was handed down to me from my great grandfather. It was a kid’s desk and my knees barely fit under it. For those few years, though, it made do.

By the time high school rolled around, I had begun to envision a sort of “design paradise.” One in which I would finally have the design space of my dreams: a “corner desk” in glorious fake wood-coated particle board. My mom made all of my dreams come true and bought it for me one Christmas. A $100 well spent at HH Gregg. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a garish addition to my bedroom’s purple/butterfly motif, and I quickly filled it with junk: Counting Crows CDs, Hanson pictures, holiday cards, school photos and nail polish.

As my design abilities started to improve, I eventually upgraded to my second computer, the 2002 iMac. The one my dad said was the best-designed computer in the world because no one had ever thought to simply make a motherboard round. I think he wished he had thought of it. I think he thought he could have *almost* thought of it. Trouble is, he didn’t. Anyway, it was a graduation present to me, and I was off to college with my first two iMac’s in tow. We left the corner desk in the dust.

Here’s where my workspaces get blurred into a flurry of beer and vomit coated college life. I had an Ikea side table desk, a card table desk, a bunk bed with the desk at the bottom, a trunk desk that was accompanied by a pillow as the “chair”, and even an on-the-floor-desk that made my legs fall asleep. As one might imagine, none of these spaces, with their close proximity to screaming, partying college roommates coming in and out of my life throughout the 8, yes 8, years that I spent getting my 2 degrees, were very conducive to excellent design. Somehow, though, I got through the work and continued my self-initiated design projects all the while. These circumstances made do and life, time, and design went on. I got better - a lot better actually. And then, one day, I finally graduated.

At this time, Dad came to the rescue again, always the driving force in my computer updates and Apple indoctrination with my fabulous first laptop. And not just any laptop, but an Apple laptop. And not just any Apple laptop, but the incredible MacBook Pro. I spent my first two months after graduation doing a bunch of freelance work with my computer finally ON MY LAP, my feet up on the coffee table in my first adult apartment, enjoying every episode of Law and Order SVU and Criminal Intent ever made. I decided that I had finally reached Design Utopia.

And that’s pretty much how things stayed. I started working for the design group MetaLab remotely shortly thereafter, which allowed me to continue this pajama-onesie design/style/life. No real workspace - just straight chillin’. Eventually I bought my own MacBook Pro as an upgrade, for the first time ever, and that was a major accomplishment. I felt like an adult, and though I’m grateful as shit to old dad for all the computer advice throughout the years, it was amazing to bust out my debit card and pay cash for the single largest purchase I’d ever made.

In September of 2011 I decided it was time to go West, and I flew to San Francisco with my boyfriend Chris. We signed the first lease we could afford. Then, we rented a U-Haul and drove from Milwaukee to SF, shiny new MacBook Pro in tow.

Here’s where I come to the end of part 1 and get to the point: How does your design space affect the way you work? The quality of your work? And…I’ll just throw it in there, your sanity?

I currently sit at an old Ikea desk in an old Ikea chair that I believe was bought by our CEO on the very app I design, but I’ve upgraded at work to the sweetest 27in Apple cinema display. I swear it makes my work at least 43% more awesome. Despite all this, I lustfully save photos of local “rockstar” designers’ studio spaces to my desktop folder called “Interior Inspiration.” I sometimes get seriously bummed that I don’t have a Swag Leg desk, an Executive chair, or $15,000 work of framed artwork on my walls (most of which, I’m sure you know, would have been spent on the framing…sheesh, framers. I got into the wrong business). But…are they that important?

In short, I think it’s time I get a studio space, or office space, or work-conducive space of some sort for when I’m not at Yardsale. A place I can go on the weekends, or at 2am with a good idea and a comfortable sweatsuit. A place with a pinup board and a flat surface big enough for a laptop, a printer, a cutting mat and a sketch pad. Imagine THAT SHIT. A place I can illustrate cats wearing dresses without the judgement of my peers. Those are the things of which my sweetest dreams are made.

I’m in the market for co-renting a studio with someone locally, or possibly turning my spare room into a real studio. Comments are open, folks: what are your thoughts on all this? Post pictures of your spaces or email addresses of friends looking for studio partners!

If you’re still reading, bless your little heart. this turned into a bit of a life story as well as a design post, but hey, it’s called “Design Life” after all.

Part 2 to come…