Turn Off the Lights

For most of us working from home is a huge gift. We forego mileage on our vehicles and the expense associated with traveling back and forth to the office. However, if we’re not careful those savings can easily dwindle by the energy we use being home much of the day. Running electricity and the cost associated with its use can be counter productive to operating a home business. If your intention is to conserve money then that means efficiently managing utility use.

Consider placing your home office in a room that has the most natural light. Place your desk directly beneath the window where the sun and fresh air can stimulate your creative juices. The natural light will not only keep your utility cost at a minimum, it will also provide Vitamin D which can assist with energy level and attitude.

Solatube has some interesting info on the effect of light in the home. And the Heschong Mahone Group’s studies on the effect of natural light on school kids are fascinating. If they learn better maybe we will also work better with a bit of sun in the room!

Saving money and the environment while working from home with the sun beaming in on you – sounds like a win-win situation.

Image via Living Etc.

Inspiration: Remodelista’s Julie Carlson

This is the final interview in the four-part series on the editors of Remodelista – a blog full of chic design inspiration. Julie Carlson lives in Mill Valley, California with her husband and  children in a house remodeled by Jerome Buttrick of Buttrick Wong Architects. She talks here about her home office in the living room (above) and working remotely with her fellow editors.

How would you describe your workspace? What is the design aesthetic? How does that impact your work? I am drawn to a modern, functional Scandinavian style and a streamlined aesthetic. I also am enamored of Bay Area design—the rustic modern architecture of Joseph Esherick, the organic shapes of potter Edith Heath, the paintings of Richard Diebenkorn. Also a lover of New England understatement.  My workspace is typically my living room.  My husband has appropriated the office as his own, which is fine with me as I prefer the living room, which gets much better natural light.

Does anyone else use your office? Since the living room in our home is part of a great room (which also includes the dining room and kitchen), there is a lot of flow in and around me when I am working.

How do you organize the space? Almost everything I do for Remodelista is stored and organized on my laptop, so I don’t have a huge organizational system for my workspace.  I do have a lot of shelter periodicals that I peruse which I store near my chair in a large basket.  I also have several systems for storing images on my laptop and for bookmarking blogs, because so much of our work revolves around finding and presenting beautiful imagery.

What impact do you think color has on a workspace? Most of the color in our home comes from seasonal flowers and branches we bring inside, as well as from art.  My affinity for Scandinavian design translates into clean-lined, simple spaces with lots of white and warm woods.   I like a workspace that is light and calming, without an excess of color.

What desk accessory can’t you do without? For sheer necessity, my laptop. I also love pencils; my favorites are from Cedar Pointe; they’re made of California incense cedar with a black eraser. Canoe in Portland, Oregon, offers them for $5 per dozen.

Is there a piece of furniture you’d love to replace? We are currently looking for a new dining room table.  I love our current table (pictured below), but it only seats eight for dinner comfortably; we’d like one that seats at least ten.

What inspires you? The low-key modernist architecture of outer Cape Cod, where Marcel Breuer, Eero Saarinen, Walter Gropius, and Serge Chermayeff built vacation houses. (My first job was cleaning Saarinen’s house on Long Pond.)  Also, the spectacular de Young Museum in San Francisco by Herzog & de Meuron, a trip to the furniture and home design department of Liberty of London, the deceptive simplicity of Jasper Morrison’s designs (his Glass Family drinking glasses are genius), and the Bloomsbury aesthetic.

You see so many great workspaces. Is there one that really stands out for you? I love this compact office by Brooklyn-based architects Delson or Sherman Architects.; the wrap-around built-in shelves and the built in desk and cabinetry, the window next to the desk, the Eames office chair.

How do you manage a balance between work and the rest of your life? Some days there is more balance than others, but thanks to several new technologies, we can each work remotely, which helps our editors work around the demands of family and home.  Skype, Twitter, Google Docs, the iPhone, and the fact that we can all edit a post through the same online system allow us to work from Brooklyn, San Francisco, Napa and Mill Valley simultaneously. Remodelista is a truly virtual enterprise: after several years of working together, we finally converged in one place (for the first time) at a presentation for the flagship Design Within Reach store in SoHo, just last year.

High Five

Our week around the web:

1. Culture Label Who doesn’t love a well-curated museum shop? Is it just me or do you wish you could start your museum visit here? It’s like a reverse dinner – dessert and then the main. For all of us who like their sweets check out British Culture Label. They’ve trawled 70 museum shops for cool design objects. Where to start? Type office into the search box for some excellent home office accessories.

2. You, Me and The Royal We Closer to home Brooklyn-based Oliver Jeffers, Mac Premo and Aaron Ruff sell a variety of designs including #10 pencils emblazoned with “These Machines Kill Facists”. After all, the pen is mightier than the sword. Where to start: If you can get beyond the pencils try the hand-drawn map of the world. Hang it in your home office to remind yourself of where you’ll be on your next holiday.

3. Fast Company A business magazine for creatives. The online version of this magazine has an excellent design section. Where to start: Check out how we’ll be working in 2025

4. The Contaminated Immerse yourself in all things geeky. The tagline is spot on – this is a cool place for weird and amazing articles. Where to start: A house built from Lego – because it’s weird and cool.

5. Gizmodo If you hadn’t heard about this blog you have now (yep, these are the guys at the heart of the iPhone drama). What hasn’t been said is that it’s a great blog if you are even slightly interested in technology and enjoy a cheeky tone. Where to start: Their take on architecture section is always interesting.

Unplggd: Vote for the Perfect Workspace

“After tabulating all the votes amongst our team here at Unplggd, we’re proud to announce the three finalists of this year’s The Perfect Workspace Contest. Each of these spaces were chosen as glowing examples of thoughtfully merging home tech with a notable element of design incorporated into their workspace.

Now we need your help Unplggd readers! Help decide which of the three will win an Apple iPad. Voting will be open for the next 24 hours, so go to Unplggd and vote!

By Gregory Han”

Inspiration: Interior Designer Laura Clayton Baker

LA-based Laura Baker was lucky enough to be able to designer her own backyard home office. Here she shares her home office and tips on designing a space you actually want to spend time in! Always a plus with a home office.

How long have you worked from home? And where is home? I live in Santa Monica Canyon with my husband Steven and our two children. I’ve had this home office for about 8 years, since we built a studio behind our house. I designed the studio in reference to our house, which was designed by Craig Elwood in 1953. I created a small area to use as a home office, off the main living area of the structure. I’m an interior designer, and the nature of my work is very portable.

I have an office in Brentwood where I go when I’m drafting (I design a lot of custom furniture and cabinetry and find drafting by hand is part of the design process), having meetings, and putting presentations together, but my home office is where I spend time on the computer, researching, shopping, and doing paperwork. It’s also where I sketch ideas.

Describe your style? How would you define your aesthetic?I have a simple, spare, yet warm approach to interiors, both residential and contract. I enjoy the interaction of modern and traditional, and use the juxtaposition in my work. Whether the space is a 1950s Case Study house or an old Spanish home I like to create a clean backdrop, allowing light and air to set off the spare interior. I use soft natural fabrics that drape well such as heavy linens and have a patina of age the way old velvet does, and make the space inviting with comfortable relaxed upholstery pieces and shots of color.

I incorporate a few interesting sculptural pieces to create interest, and life, and these things may be new, vintage, or antique, but they’re three dimensional pieces that create interesting views. In a space that gets good sunlight I like to work with pale natural colors and in darker environments highly saturated colors, even if they just function as accents, can bring a lot of energy to a room.

As an interior designer with multiple clients how do you keep your office organized? I’m thinking here of the physical space but also your computer. Are there any particular programs you find really useful? There’s nothing like a good file cabinet, which is where I keep my jobs organized in my Brentwood office. However, since I need to carry my files around with me I take the current project files in a tote bag that is always nearby. I just found a new tool that may help with the traveling files; a plain black file portfolio that Moleskin makes. There is something so appealing about their products, this has a very traditional feel, and in the age of technology I like it’s old fashioned quality. As this portfolio is small it may be the perfect thing to carry around. I create files for each job on my computer (a Mac Power Book G4 which is just about ready to be replaced), and I enter all the financial information into Quick Books which is terrific. I keep binders with back up copies of all invoices as well, as I like to have a set of hard copies.

When you are designing a home office what do you keep in mind? It’s important to make the home office a place you want to use, so having favorite things hanging on the wall, or on a nearby shelf is helpful. It’s good to have flowers on a desk…it’s like a gift to yourself when they’re in a place just meant for you.

The office should be of a piece with the rest of the home, designed with the same aesthetic and style. I always find out what kind of equipment needs to be accommodated; computer, printer, fax, phone, and so forth, and design to provide space for those things, and wiring channels to hide all the cables and cords as much as possible. Having enough specifically allocated storage is critical to enable a sense of order, as well as easy cleaning.

If it’s part of a larger room the storage can be disguised if need be. Good task lighting, is essential of course. And finally, a comfortable chair makes it a much more pleasant place to spend time.

Is there any piece of home office furniture you covet? I still use an old stool I’ve had since I lived in a very un-renovated loft when I was a student at Parsons in New York, and though I’m sentimental about it I think it’s time to indulge myself! I like to work on a high surface, so that I can stand as I sort through things, but it would be wonderful to have a really comfortable drafting stool. I love the Areon Work Stool in the graphite finish. I especially like the adjustable height foot rest. The airiness of the mesh would prevent a sense of crowding in the small space.

What is a desk accessory you can’t do without? A box of magnets, to add images to the wall over my desk which is covered with magnetic paint.

What would you change about your own workspace? I’d like to have a window seat, but given the case study design of our house it would be completely out of place! I encourage all my clients to include them to give me the vicarious enjoyment! At least with a comfortable chair I could daydream while looking out the window…not an easy thing to do on a wooden stool!

What do you most love about your space? I love the color of the walls…Farrow and Ball “Skylight”. I love having all my favorite books, magazines and art supplies at arms reach. I am almost glad there isn’t more space, because it’s forced me to edit. I love being able to open the sliding door and nearly be outside. I love my magnetized wall over my desk, for an easy way to arrange images that matter to me. And I love still being close to my family when I’m there.

What inspires you? The first thing that comes to mind is color. When I look at any color it brings to mind a whole world that I can envision around it. I’m very much a beach person, so the color and texture of driftwood, all the blues in the ocean and sky, and the feel of natural fabrics that were left out in the sun too long all inspire me. Inspiration can come from so many places…favorite flowers, objects, locations, can all be springboards. I find paintings to be a wonderful source of inspiration, and you can see some of my favorite artists on my blog.

The Playlist: Grace Bonney of Design*Sponge

With a mission to help people to create homes they love and lives they want to live, Design*Sponge has been delivering daily inspiration and original content to design devotees since August 2004. Writer Grace Bonney, the site’s cheerful creator, talked to us from her “office”—the (very tasteful) couch in her Brooklyn living room—about TV vs. music, The New Pornographers, and keeping things positive.

Do you listen to music while you work? I actually listen to television more than I do music at work. For some reason, music makes me want to stop and sing along, so I tend to throw on an old silly movie that I’ve seen before so it feels like I have some “company” in the room, without being too distracted.

How do you listen? I listen to the TV or to music through the entertainment center in our living room. Our living room is my makeshift office, because I find I’m more productive when I’m comfortable and in a place that feels like “home” and not an “office.” Because I work at home alone, I can really turn up the volume as loudly as I like, which is fun during breaks. I’ve been known to dance away stressful days by cranking up some cheesy music in the living room.

Do you have any favorite music websites/providers? Aaron, my husband, suggested Pandora to me, but I could never get it to be quite right, so I tend to make my own mixes on ITunes and play them through the house speakers. I’ll arrange them by mood, by occasion (road trip, long-tagging weekend), or by artist and then just let them roll.

Does music influence your work? I think the artwork associated with music, like album covers, videos, and album collateral, definitely influences me—and we’ve covered some of my favorite music related design stories on the site before. But music itself usually acts as an escape from the blogging, rather than an inspiration for it.

Who influences your musical taste? My husband Aaron is responsible for almost all of the music I’ve fallen in love with in the past seven years. He introduced me to my new favorite band of all time: The New Pornographers. He used to make me the sweetest mix CDs when we started dating in 2003 and I learned so much about indie rock from him. So he’s always my go-to source for great new music. I tend to love old folk music, 60’s era singers, and, oddly, grunge/riot grrl music (the 90′s really weighed heavily on my taste), so he definitely has improved and rounded out my musical tastes. (Although I like to remind him that I used to have a radio show in college, so at some point I actually suggested music to other people. It just happened to be jam bands—something Aaron is not likely to enjoy!)

What song or artist best represents the work you create? Well, my heart belongs to AC Newman and The New Pornographers, so I’d say them. I am completely obsessed with the wall of sound they create and the cheerful, happy tone to their songs. It’s pure, unadulterated joy and happiness, and I think I try to do the same thing on my site. I try to be as happy, positive, and inspiring (with the design we post) as possible. For me, there’s just not enough time in life to spend on sad or negative blogging—or on sad songs.

GRACE’S PLAYLIST:

1. The Town Halo, AC Newman
2. Letter from an Occupant, The New Pornographers
3. Cinnamon Girl, Neil Young
4. Girl Anachronism, The Dredsen Dolls
5. Oh My God, The Empties
6. Blah Blah Blah, Ke$ha
7. Give it Up to Me, Shakira
8. Cities, The Talking Heads
9. Psycho Killer, The Talking Heads
10. Jackie Dressed in Cobras, The New Pornographers
11. At the Beach, The Avett Brothers
12. Empire State of Mind, Jay-Z

Images: Patrick Cline for Lonny Magazine, portrait by Anna Wolf.

Five Fabulous: Address Files

1. Welded Address File with Laser Cut Tabs, $45 This sturdy industrial piece is sanded, grinded, buffed, coated, and tougher than any other address file on the block. Get it: etsy.com

2. Silver Card Index, $40 Get your workspace in order with a timeless silver design. Get it: See Jane Work

3. Letterpress Address Card File with Box, $49 Smart and charmingly handmade—the oak box is even built in the storeowner’s dad’s woodshop. Get it: etsy.com

4. Desktop Business Card Holder, AUD $49.95 This simple acrylic filer allows for quick contact management (and looks sleek while doing it). Get it: Kikki.K

5. Address File, $65 The handcrafted wooden box comes in maple or black walnut and uses recycled papers (good for the earth; good for your desktop). Get it: Lovely Design

Images linked to their sources within the numbered text

Wireless Synching? We Hope So…

“If there’s one thing that drives us crazy it’s trying to find a particular syncing cable in our bag o’ USB cords. There have been numerous occasions we’ve cursed our missing iPod Touch cable and cursed Apple for not having a wireless sync option. One developer has coded a solution, but it’s up in the air whether or not Steve Jobs and company will approve its sale in the iTunes App Store.

The app uses your existing WiFi network to sync your iPhone, iPod, or iPad with your computer. U.K.-based developer Greg Hughes has even engineered a Windows version.

According to Rick Broida of Cnet, “In an e-mail I received from Hughes, he says he plans to submit Wi-Fi Sync at the end of this week. Chances are we’ll be waiting at least another week after that to find out if the application makes it through. If it does, it’ll cost you $4.99–a perfectly reasonable price for such a desirable capability, IMHO.” We fully agree, but we fear Broida may be right in predicting that the folks at Apple won’t approve this useful app. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.

By Sonia Zjawinski”

Heather’s Garage Conversion: Paint

It’s no secret that I’m obsessed with paint. There were a million things on my to-do list this past weekend, but the moment our toddler went down for his daily nap, I jumped at the chance to spend an hour or two playing with paint instead. Currently our house and garage are painted with a depressingly dingy Navajo White and dark brown trim. I can’t wait to paint the exterior stucco of the garage and our house in a custom Benjamin Moore color called Meadowood Gray, and the trim in Meadowood Cream, based on the color scheme of Meadowood Napa Valley where my husband and I got married. The guys at Paint Works in St Helena shared the paint formulas. For the accent color, which will be featured on the garage door and the shutters on our house, I’m playing around with a few Farrow & Ball colors. The end result will be a surprise, but here is sneak peek at possible contenders…

Inspiration: Chris Zawada of Lovely Package

Chris Zawada is the editor-in-chief and founder of Lovely Package - a blog that covers the best package design from all over the globe.

You work from an ad agency and also from home. How long have you been working in both places…and where is ‘home’? I’ve been with TAXI Advertising & Design for 3 years. We’re a passionate group of people striving to produce award-winning campaigns and designs for our clients across the network of offices (Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Vancouver, New York and Amsterdam). Lovely Package was founded in late 2008 in Vancouver, Canada where I currently reside.

What does an average work day involve? The average day tends to be a long one. I usually get up early and check my email to see what new package design submissions we have received. Myself and a team of 3 other editors will sift through the work and prep submissions that we feel adhere to a high standard of design which will be posted that day or throughout the week. From there it’s off to TAXI for the day where I still monitor the site, approve and delete comments and generally just make sure everything is working as planned. Being that I have other obligations during the day which don’t allow me to focus all of my time towards Lovely Package, I am grateful to have Helen Shaw who is also a Vancouver-based designer and our Deputy Editor help keep things running smoothly. Nights are typically filled with going through more submissions or scouring the web in search of those elusive lovely packages. Lately a lot of my free time is focused on building the new version of Lovely Package which visually and functionally will be a big departure from the current site. I think our readers are really going to like what we have in-store for them.

Is there any form of technology that really inspires and helps with your work? Hands down my iPhone. I was a late adopter to this technology having got mine a few months ago, but it has really changed the way I do things. Being able to reply to emails on the go and monitor Lovely Package both online and through the WordPress’ iPhone app has really increased my productivity. Now that I have it, I don’t know how I lived without it.

How do you organize your space? I’m thinking here of your physical space but also your virtual space. Is there any particular software or program that helps keep things under control? I hate clutter both in my physical and virtual space. You’ll find plenty of shelving and storage to keep things clean and organized in my environment. When it comes to my virtual space I like to keep it simple. No fancy applications, just clearly labeled and organized folders which house inspirational finds, resources, documents, etc. I then use Adobe’s Bridge to browse the contents of these folders.
What item from your desktop can you not do without? My computer of course!

What piece of office furniture do you most treasure? What do you want to replace? Working on a laptop allows me to roam around and work in various places so I really consider the entire house my office. I’d have to say that my favourite piece of furniture would have to be my Eames Lounge Chair. Not only is it a beautiful example of mid century modern design, it’s possibly one of the most comfortable chairs I have ever sat on. I have an older Keilhauer Tom office chair and while as comfortable as it may be, it looks a bit dated. I’d like to replace it with an Eames Aluminum Group chair.

What inspires you? Inspiration is all around. I may find it in the unique way a leaf has grown on a tree, or in the design of a piece of cutlery. When I need to be inspired I just step outside and take in the world around me.