We are all sitting at our desks doing the same thing… we are all Designing. Who else out there can relate? What does their environment look like? Is anyone else going through the same exact thing I am right now?

Alex Giron created a Design Faces pool on Flickr, and I have really enjoyed seeing the shots taken by other designers as they sit at their computers working their magic. If you are a Designer… join the pool and take a shot. Its great source of inspiration!

I grew up on Macs. I am a member of an all Apple family and currently live in all Mac Household. My first Mac was a Quadra 605 and I have never owned any sort of Windows machine. My family still holds on to a Flower Power (still running) in our attic. In 2002 I started my summer job at an Apple Specialist in Richmond. Back then there weren’t Apple stores, there were Apple Specialists who had on-site (knowledgeable) repair technicians. We used to throw midnight release parties for the new OSs and would rent out a local movie theater to broadcast Mr. Jobs’ keynotes. Some people think this sounds pretty dorky but It was the most fun I have ever had in my life. Everyday I woke up and got to share my passion with the Apple Community. And thats what it was… a community.

(Im not pissed off in this pic, I just didn’t know my picture was being taken at work)

Apple has inspired a culture that extends beyond a brand, it created a community and now that community is becoming mainstream. So was it a revolution? Perhaps it has just made people begin to think Different…ly.

This trailer got me thinking a little bit about how things have changed since my days working at Capitol Mac.

This month marks my one year blog-iversary.

When my blog first launched it did not look like this at all. I have actually had a lot of websites; none of which are at the domain SamanthaWarren.com. No, rather a super-classy 1992 styled “Under Construction” warning has taken up a permanent residence on that page. It has been there since 1999 which is why I decided to pick the corniest, longest, most ridiculous joke URL I could possibly think of for my first domain. SamanthaRocksYourWorld.freeservers.com in all of it’s blazing college glory didn’t last very long, but I can tell you that it could have put a lot of today’s myspace profiles to shame.

Once the need to use my website as a place to send a shout out to all of “my dawgs” wore off the quest to experiment with online media began. People have asked me how I learned to build websites, and besides the help I got from some fantastic coworkers, my personal website really is what taught me how things works. It is a continuous experimentation. Now I am going to show you what a lot of other designers probably wouldn’t… the evolution of my personal web site. Keep in mind “at first you don’t succeed, try try again”.

2002 SamanthaWarren.net
I muddled my way through dreamweaver using a book and dumb luck to come up with my first real portfolio site. I had no idea what the hell I was doing, but looking back on the code, I am surprised to find it in pretty good shape. The entire motif was crude and simple; revolving around a concept piece I created for my final college portfolio. The idea was to hand a possible employer a file from a mental ward stating I was “crazy about design”. Probably not something I would go with again.

June 2005 SamanthaWarren.net v2 & v 2.5
After completing a few sites for the Army web team I felt confident to bust out some CSS of my own and experiment with flash. The flower on the left hand side grew when you first came to the page. While a happy dance was done over an achievement as that,it wasn’t long before I realized there weremajor issues that needed to be addressed. For instance…. It took forever and a day to load my portfolio. So I went back and rebuilt the entire site again from the ground up and launched a sleeker version 2.5 of my website. As soon as that was up I quickly saw the potential to improve and redesign.

January 2006 SWarrenDesign.com
So the flash bug then bit me. This site provided me the perfect challenge to learn the basics of flash but not without some headache. Early on I settled on a Victorian Phrenolgy concept hat looked 90% awesome but had this interactive bald-headed me on the front page. Killer concept but visualy rode the boarder between genius and really friggen’ weird looking. So loving the design otherwise I concocted an animated version of my cat to fill the void. Funny… but still a little friggen’ weird. This would be an example of when a concept running off on a tangent. I keep this site live for kicks… go check it out.

January 2007 BadAssIdeas.com
After my first trip to SXSW in 2006 I was not only inspired to crack open some Wordpress CSS but to start blogging. When I told people i was going to blog their first reaction was “What about?” and as you can see that probelm worked itself out fairly well. The inspiration for the name came partly from a joking remark made by a colleague referring to my “Bad Ass Ideas” and visually from my love for Janis Joplin. Janis had a relationship with the San Fransisco Hells Angels who she gives a shout out to on her “Cheap Thrills Album”. Inspired by the no-bullshit attitude of Miss Joplin, this version of Bad Ass Ideas was born. Between this redesign and this final version I did over 32 unique comps.

June 2007 BadAssIdeas.com v2
Rejuvenated by my second trip to SXSW and my growing obsession with social media I decided to redesign and realign many visual and structural elements of the site. I also surprised myself with my dedication to blogging and decided that should come to the forefront of the site. Visually I wanted the content to be the spotlight enhancing my audience’s usability. Hoping to reference the patterns found in the 1960s art-nouveau poster that advertised Janis’s tour I added a faded Victorian pattern into the background of the site. It is reminiscent of her many costumes that now seem to be available at any local Urban Outfitters.

Expect a redesign before June 2008.

Meet Missy: my parent’s 13 year old miniature schnauzer who hates to swim, must have her hind quarters touching another living being at all times, and has an alarmingly pitiful bark. Missy struggles with a very embarrassing personal hygiene issue which makes her ridiculously stinky. If you have a miniature schnauzer you probably know the issue I am talking about, if you don’t… I will spare you the gross details. Regardless… she smells like Butt.

One summer break back in college I spent a few months at my parents house to work on a giant fish for the City of Richmond and brought a whole load of my art and design supplies back with me to work on some projects. In school my focus was on print design, and one of my favorite exercises was printing on sheets of velum and then gluing them together with Super 77 to achieve a rad layered effect. According to 3Ms product site, Super 77 “forms strong bonds with everything from paper, cardboard, fabric and cushion foam to plastic, metal, wood and much more.” If you have ever used Super 77 you are well aware that if you get that stuff stuck on your hands, everything is sticking to your hands for the next few days.

My parents have a utility room where they keep all their odds and ends, canned goods, and fix-it tools… this is the dank area to which they banned all of my art supplies. Once I moved off to college my mother turned my room into her Floral Arrangement-Making studio, and I never again had a real place to keep any of my personal belongings. There… in the Utility room, on a shelf below a light switch sat my 24 oz can of aerosol spray adhesive… right next to a 24 oz can of aerosol doggie deodorant destined for Missy.

What happened next was inevitable… all I heard was screams from the backyard. I ran outside to find a small dog so scared and so sticky, she stood as still as a statue.

So here is the money question: How do you get Super 77 off of a 12 pound salt-and-pepper Schnauzer?

The other questions that followed included … how do you keep herself from licking it and poisoning herself? How do you keep the flys from not sticking to it as she plays outside? how do you stop the blades of grass from attaching themselves to her coat?

So I rang up 3M. The call went like this:

Me: Hi sir, I am having a problem with your product that was mistakenly used in a way not recommended by your company, do you think you could give me some tips on what to do?

3M Guy: Sure, how was this product accidentally used? did you spray your hands? your hair? clothing?

Me: A schnauzer

3M Guy: (Silence)

Me: It was an accident.

3M Guy: A dog?

Me: A small dog, that does not shed. THINGS are sticking to her.

3M guy: (Silence) (more silence) Please hold.

——Cheesy hold music——

3M Guy: Ma’m, we are working on this for you, (roaring background laughter) please hold just a little while longer….

In the end 3M held it together long enough to let me know that they recommended bathing the dog in vegetable oil. The idea of having an oily dog versus a sticky dog wasn’t that much more appealing so we just shaved her.*

The Moral of this story :
Design supplies can be dangerous stuff &
3M super 77 is some Bad Ass Sh*t.

*No animals were harmed in the making of this blog post

Being designer can sometimes be tiring. I will never say it sucks or that its a crappy job because that is just not true. It is a privilege to be a designer and in my opinion it is the best job in the whole world, but just like any other creative occupation sometimes you feel a little burnt out. I don’t mean burnt out like Vanilla Ice burnt out or Danny Bonaduce burnt out, I mean sometimes you come home and think to yourself… “how the hell am I going to squeeze one more droplet of creativity out of this dried up sponge of a brain today?” Its not even the how, its the why. If you are ever feeling this way try and recount all the ways design makes you happy….