Peeping into 88 Designer’s Workstations in the Design Community
We have seen lots of beautiful websites, created by many talented web designers from around the world. And I bet many of us are curious to know how their workstations look like or what kind of computers they use. Web designers spend most of their time in front of their computers, and they will make their workstations as comfortable as possible, based on their styles and needs.
A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station...
To abate everyone’s curiosity, we are going to take a peek at some workstations of web designers from around the world. Every picture was sent and shared personally by each individual web designer and we hope that the pictures of their workstations will inspire you to give your own workstation at home a makeover as well.
Showcase of Workstations
Jonathan Patterson
Fresh Meat is the antithesis of stale. Seasoned enough to get the job done, but fresh enough to be current, Jonathan Patterson is Fresh Meat.
Dean Oakley
Dean Oakley lives on the Gold Coast, Australia, where he graduated as Bachelor of IT with 1st Class Honours from Griffith University in 2004. Since then he has been enjoying working in web design and development.
Jonathan Snook
Jonathan Snook is a creator of striking designs, impeccable markup and code, and forward-thinking ideas and applications.
Gian Carlo Franco
Gian Carlo Franco is a web designer, front-end developer, and WordPress themer currently living in Vancouver.
Sujie Wang
Sujie Wang is a web designer and developer since 10+ years ago.
Bojan Janjanin
Bojan Janjanin is a freelance web designer based in Croatia and Yesterdayishere is his online home.
Elliot Jay Stocks
Elliot Jay Stocks is a designer, an illustrator, a speaker, and an author. Occasionally, he has been known to wear the ‘musician’ hat, too.
Marko Dugonjićf0
A web professional from Velika Gorica, Croatia. The nick maratz was acquired in the ‘90s, hence the domain name.
Joseph Lifrieri
Joseph Lifrieri ia a visual artist specializing in illustration and design for digital mediums. He likes zombies, legos, and video games.
Darren Hoyt
Darren Hoyt is an interface designer and developer based in New York. In addition to client work, he releases his own products and writings on the side.
Thomas Veit
Thomas Veit is a web developer, designer and WordPress Rockstar! He loves creative work like designing websites or creating music on his lovely mac computer.
Bogdan Sandu
Web designer from Bucharest, Romania, owner of design your way.
Magnus Jepson
Magnus Jepson is a web designer and co-founder of WooThemes, from Norway.
Andrayogi
Andrayogi is a web designer from Jakarta, Indonesia. He fell in love with web design since he was in high school, that would be around 1999.
Delphine Pages
Delphine Pagès is a graphic/web designer and a cheese "monster". She is a French and lives in London.
Steve Mullen
Steve Mullen is a web designer and front end developer from Tulsa, Oklahoma. He enjoys making the web a better looking place.
Rich McNabb
Freelance website designer with work showcased internationally most recognizable at smashingmagazine.com, cssmania.com and creattica.com.
Daniel Gutierrez
Daniel Gutierrez is a young designer from Chile who wants to change the world into a colorful place.
Ryan Scherf
Ryan Scherf is a web designer, developer, entrepreneur and standards evangelist located in Minneapolis, MN.
Jamison Banham
Jamison Banham is a graphic and web designer, and internet marketer. His interests are anything design related, online business, partying hard and enjoying life.
Yichi
Yichi is a graphic user interface designer from China with a passion for visual and interactive design.
Angel Sulistyo
Angel Sulistyo has been making websites since 1999. She learns it by herself, she is a self-taught person and a fast learner.
Larissa Meek
Larissa Meek has been a 3D animator, Miss USA finalist, model, actress and reality TV star. She is really an artist at heart and eventually discovered a passion for the interactive medium.
Juanma Teixido
Juanma Teixidó is a graphic/web designer from Paraguay.
Leticia Motta
Leticia Motta is a visual and interaction designer from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She is a compulsive blog reader and online music listener.
Inayaili de León
Inayaili de León is a web designer. That makes websites both beautiful and easy to use — she can make a lot of amorphous content look clean and simple.
Lea Alcantara
Lea Alcantara is the Creative Principal / Chief Hired Gun of Lealea Design.
Mike
Mike designed his first site back in 1998. Since then he has worked for a number of web design studios, advertising agencies, and online corporations.
Albert Lo
Albert Lo specializes in creating websites with visual flair that are user-friendly and built according to best-practice web standards. He also creates corporate identity, branding and graphic designs for the web.
Matt Bango
Matt Bango is currently a 23 year old web developer working at The New York Times in New York City.
Nathan Carnes
Nathan Carnes, a freelance graphic designer and website developer from Bellingham, Washington.
Timothy Van Sas
Timothy van Sas but also respond to Tim or Rambo. He is very good at web design, XHTML, CSS, and smooth dancing!
Chris Hortsch
Graphic designer and web designer from Hamburg, Germany, 23 years young and always on the lookout for new challenges.
Tanya Merone
Tanya Merone is a graphic designer based in New York, specializing in user interface design and development.
Alyssa Tucker
Designing clean, intuitive websites is what she likes to focus on while keeping in mind the user experience throughout the process.
Catarina Brito
Catarina Brito's passion for design is what drives her ideas, hard work and will to go beyond what's expected.
James Li
A visual designer based out of Taipei, Taiwan specializing in interactive design, print design and project management.
Matt Cronin
Matt Cronin is a professional web designer and developer. He is a pro in everything from Photoshop and Illustrator to HTML and PHP.
Kristof Orts
A different designer from the great city of Antwerp. He's also a developer, illustrator and all around good guy that loves graphic & web design.
Ignaty Nikulin
An European web designer and developer, soon moving to work in London. He loves animals and donate 5% of all his profits to World Wildlife Fund.
Jonno Riekwel
Six years ago, Jonno Riekwel started self-learning Photoshop and later on HTML and CSS. It was the best decision he made to date.
Andrew Canham
Andrew Canham loves web design, web standards and all that jazz.
Janine Pring
A freelance web designer from the Philippines.
Jonas Lekevicius
Jonas Lekevicius is a web and graphic designer freelancing since 2005. With each project he strives to create innovative and original yet simple and usable design.
David Desandro
David Desandro revels in the creative process. Building from the foundations of art, math, and logic, he produces elegant, inspiring interfaces. Exploring uncharted waters in the medium, he innovates to find new ways to design for the web.
Max Tillich
Max Tillich designs and develops things for the web after school.
Aaron Moody
Aaron Moody is a web and graphic designer, he creates visual solutions for passionate individuals and businesses.
Matt Regan
A designer stationed in Taipei, Taiwan. Not only is he a great guy, but he can help develop your website in Taiwan.
Sara Tusar
Sara Tusar eats, breathes, and dreams web design. Awesome web design.
Trevor Sheridan
Trevor Sheridan is a software developer/designer located in Denver Colorado. He works for himself and wouldn't have it any other way. Like a lot of developers he loves open source and try to contribute to these projects whenever time permits.
Kevin Vertommen
Kevin Vertommen is a design addict from Belgium. He is also interested in football and games.
Jon Phillips
Jon Phillips is the lead designer and founder of SpyreStudios.
Spencer Sy
A web graphic designer and Illustrator who combines hand drawing skills with digital graphics for the web and print. Loves to design and illustrate almost anything related to the web or print.
Richie Thimmaiah
Richie Thimmaiah lives in suburban Bangalore, India and he is doing his bachelors in electronics engineering. He is the founder of Richworks - a design blog.
Ben
Ben is the founder of the design blog, Pixel Clouds. He loves designing graphics and websites.
Niccolò Favari
He does web development and web design. He is passionate about digital communication and quite a visionary dreamer about its future possibilities. If it's digital and it carries information, He is all for it.
Matt Hamm
Matt Hamm is a web designer & illustrator and he is the co-founder and creative director at Supereight Studio, which is a small web design studio based in Guildford, Surrey, UK.
Marcin Dziewulski
Marcin Dziewulski is currently living in Warsaw, Poland. He is a web enthusiast, CSS and jQuery addict. In his opinion, MODx CMS is the best to create websites.
Kim Burgess
An eclectic fusion of UI and UX designer, code monkey and AV geek, Kim Burgess is a multimedia professional that has a passion for creating experiences which blur the line between the physical and digital worlds. By day he develops interactive media environments and by night experiments with ways in which to better computers' ability to speak human.
Kaue Ribeiro
Kaue Ribeiro is a Brazilian-born UX Designer and front-end web developer currently working in Florida. When he is not working at a company he is here at my home workstation.
Jozef Toth
Jozef Toth is a Slovak based web designer and owner of a Drupal web design studio - Mogdesign. He blogs about web design and open-source CMS. In his free time he loves to be with his family, play music and sports.
Jessica Weber
He has been running Star Graphic Design out of his home office for 3 years now. Things are going really good, so he is considering looking at renting some space to separate home and work.
Jacob Ras
Jacob Ras is a freelance web designer who creates professional and attractive websites. In his spare time, he also creates WordPress plugins and works on his own projects.
Helen Huang
Helen Huang is a vector artist currently residing in Los Angeles. She is passionate about fashion and design. Her style is modern and elegant at the same time, with heavy Asian influence by her Chinese heritage.
Heinrich Laubscher
Heinrich Laubscher is a studio's rising star. He studied sound engineering and writes rocking guitar riffs. He has managed to learn web design in record time under our studio's guidance after falling in love with Photoshop.
Febby Tan
Febby Tan is a 20-years-old graphic artist from Indonesia. A full-time freelancer, college student, musician, mac geek, and gadget savvy.
Gavin Elliot
Gavin Elliot is the marketing and creative guy at Codeworks, he’s a designer, writer and creative strategist.
Dan Sherratt
Dan Sherratt is a web designer from Sheffield who loves to talk about himself in the third person.
Kaleb W
User experience design (UX), developer, and typography are all strong skills he posses. Photography is also a passion of his.
Callum Chapman
Callum Chapman is a self-employed designer and blogger from Royston (near Cambridge), UK, trading under his own company called Circlebox Creative. He writes for various blogs such as Circlebox Blog, the Tuts+ Network, Smashing Magazine and Webdesigner Depot - as well as taking on interesting and relevant design projects.
Brendon Grobler
Brendon Grobler is a designer working with and building websites, but he is also mad on all kinds of design, photography, expressions of creativity, and sports.
Bogdan Teodorescu
Bogdan Teodorescu, a 26 year old graphic designer from Romania, successfully handled many big fish like L'Oreal, Carlsberg, Lipton, Audi, LG during his 5 years of experience in the online industry.
Benny Roth
Benny Roth is a 28 year old webdesigner and developer, living in Munich, loving typography, colors & clean web design always inspired by nature and music.
Fandy
Fandy has experiences in various software development projects in Netway Utama, PT., iBAR Sistem Solusi, PT., and Knowment AIE - Plasmedia, as Graphic and Web Designer.
Andy Sowards
Andy Sowards is a professional web developer, programmer (primarily PHP, Javascript and Actionscript), family man, and all around advocate of all things technological.
Andrea Austoni
Andrea Austoni has been a graphic designer for over 10 years. He started out in 3D art then branched out in identity, advertising and packaging.
Alexis Brille
Alexis Brille is a project manager and user interface/experience designer from Atlanta, USA with 8 years of experience in Art and Design. She has no idea how she got to holding a Bachelor of Computer Science degree from the University of Wollongong, AUS.
Alex Carabi
Alex Carabi is an American/Swedish freelance web designer based in Stockholm, Sweden. He has a notorious soft spot for double-espressos, olive oil and jazz.
Nikola Lazarevic
Nikola Lazarevic is the owner of Webexpedition. A web design and development blog.
Special from Onextrapixel
For this article, Onextrapixel team and some of the writers have also revealed their workstations below.
Charlotte Lam
Charlotte Lam is a web designer and the editor of OXP. Her interest is in web interface and design as well as motion graphics. Her absorption with her work is mostly due to her attention to detail and passion for the world of design.
Terrance Huang
Terrance Huang is a web developer and the editor of OXP. He enjoys creating functional websites and is particularly engrossed in all the tiny details mixed together to construct great user interface experiences.
Citra Sudiro
Citra Sudiro is a graphic designer by day and a blogger by night. Her enthusiasm for illustrations and design often takes her on long surfing trips on the internet, looking for new and interesting stuff.
Marko Randjelovic
Marko is a freelance web designer & developer based in Serbia. He is always trying to improve his skills and create a better user experience for his clients.
Yaron Schoen
Yaron Schoen is an experienced designer, art director and digital artist living in Manhattan, New York. He specializes in many different fields of design but his primary focus is Web & Application Design.
Dave Gamache
Dave Gamache loves design. His workstation setup is simple and clean to keep him focused and happy while he plugs away at freelance. Do check out his award-winning portfolio site.
Shay Howe
Shay Howe is a professional web and user interface designer currently living in Chicago, IL working for a variety of clients all across the country. He periodically writes in his blog, letscounthedays, where he talks about web design and development.
Miki Mottes
A self taught cynic who loves black humour and anything retro, Miki Mottes has been creating animations and illustrations for the past few years as a full time freelancer.
Kean Richmond
Kean Richmond has been working as a web designer and developer since 2006 after graduating with a BSc in Web Development. He strives to design and build creative and visually appealing websites that are of standards compliant and search engine friendly.
Conclusion
Web designers need workstations that allow them to work comfortably and think creatively. Every web designer has their own style and personality, and their workstations reveal much about them. Whether they use a PC or a Mac, every set-up has its own story and each plays an important role in helping their web designers finish the work successfully.
How does your workstation at home look like? Tell us your story or share a picture with us on the comment section.
Nice home workstations, am I the only designer that still works in an office? =P
Where are all the client files, notepads, and whiteboards?
We keep everything in mind, we are freelancers, maniacs. (>";")>
Haha, you are right - seems most people are freelancers here.
I don't know how people can work without whiteboards though - I find them almost indispensable in my workflow.
Surprised to see so few people with graphics tablets too... Maybe it's just me...
I know what you mean.
I usually do whiteboards for fast stuff but anything else, Moleskine.
Thanks for showcasing my humble little bedroom workstation. Alongside some of these truly beautiful workstations mine looks like it needs some improvement!
Again thanks.
Thanks for the mention.
Nice to see how others to their magic.
Hello,
Thank You for including my workstation. So happy yet so very shy because I'm the only freelancer does doesn't have any mac or any widescreen monitor to show up. LOL
Thank you!
Hi Janine, don't be shy about it. You aren't the only one :)
Sweet, mine made the first of the list!
LOL. Your name must be the lucky one. We might roll the dice and it's happened to point at your name. ^^
Thank you guys :)
i nearly like them all, the imac setups look very clean.
Great showcase! Best office/workstation round-up I've seen in a while, and the first I've made it into! :D
My office is changing in a weeks time 'cause I'm moving out of parents house - shame this post wasn't a week or two later! ;)
It's really awesome to see so many web designers could participate in this post. I really appreciate for everyone's time and generosity in sharing their workstation pictures. :)
No problemo.
Nice showcase, thanks for including my workstation! :)
What an impressive showcase! Thanks for featuring me :)
I think just my workstation is messy
Amazing and it really open up for us to see how other designer's workstations look like. By the way, how do I get into the list? I'm so frustrated that I am not being invited!
Hello Leslie. Thank you for the comment.
There's always a next opportunity for other web designers to be included on our next showcase article. Keep creating and designing cool websites and share the url of your portfolio site here and we might invite you for the next article if the chance is opened again. :)
Thanks Oridusartic! I will continue to work hard!
Thank you for featuring my work station :D
Muy buena coleccion de workstation, hay unos muy buenos. Muchas gracias por contemplarme en este listado.
Nice workstation roundup!.. there is a lot pretty good. Thanks for including mine.
Oh dear, this is a great roundup!
@Janine: You don't need a mac for become a freelancer :D You need yourself confidence to deal with clients and charge them as much as you can. Mac cannot help you!
Awesome workspaces.
Don't forget mine;
http://www.flickr.com/photos/panthersweat/4318301736/
I would like to have the same workspace ;)
Great photos!
This is an awesome roundup! I really enjoying checking out how other designers set up their stations! And thanks for including mine here!
Thanks for including mine here. Man!!!, I need to buy a set of Mac computers just for the sake of it ... It invariably makes the workspace look neat and tidy...
Great idea for a post....
Great article and an inspiration to designers in setting up their workstations. Most of the workstations featured are awesome and cozy. I think workstations are an important part of a designer's creativity.
Thanks to the Onextrapixel team for featuring my workstation. Appreciate the effort.
Cheers for the inclusion. I feel a little special being the only quad header :).
That ones the coding rig, you can check out the design and media geekery rig here: http://bit.ly/studio_rig
A post on the nastiest workstations would add real contrast. Cigarettes butts lined up on a keyboard that has not been cleaned off in years and a torrent of beer cans, aging wine in glasses, dried up soda spots.... you get the idea.
But then again a West Elm desk with two 24's, a keyboard, speaker, and mouse on my desktop with the tower underneath. No more than 5 things. I love minimalism, it is essential for a proper learning and working environment.
Looks like I am the only one without a desk :D
An interesting insight into other designers workspaces!
Makes me want to tidy up mine a bit more (streamline how I do my sketches and refer to them, I am thinking a cork board next to the computer is MUCH better than just having them on a stand like I do at the moment) and get some more inspiration items to surround me to keep me reminded about all these great work areas!
Nice to see such a wide range of designers too!
I thought the same thing as Dawn, Where are all the client files, notepads, and whiteboards?
Some people hide them for the sake of a clean photo.
Wow, this is truly mac dominated industry.
That's a huge list. It's really cool to see how everyone works. I loved it. I also believe everyone did at least a little bit of tidying up before taking a pic of it...haha... at least I know I did.
Thank you posting my humble yet wacky little corner in this cool list.
Yikes! A little embarrassing actually seeing my messy, thrashed up workstation next to some beautiful setups. Next time I'll tidy up a bit and hide my daughter's pokemon stickers plastered all over my desk. :p Great showcase nonetheless!
Good to see so many workstations of various peoples............... many of them are truly beautiful and wonderful infact.......... thanks for sharing..:)
Thanks for the showcase! Nice to know i'm not the only one without an iMac :).
Ah missed out. Here's mine anyway now that I've taken the photo! http://matthewbrown.com.au/2010/04/06/my-work-area/
I feel as though my area is perhaps a bit messy - Dunno how you guys keep yours so clear! Every day there is something else that has to go somewhere!
Thanks for sharing your space Matt. Lol. I think many cleared the bulk away to snap the picture! Some work efficiently with things surrounding them.
No worries Charlotte (I need to get my act together a bit sooner next time!) I agree though, if everything is away somewhere, it takes much to long to find it when I need it!
I guess this is the first workstation collection I've come across, nice compilation.
Thanks for displaying my desk guys, hope in the near future I can have the same workstation like other designers displayed above
i don't have a workspace.
I worked everywhere :(
Well, I guess some of the designers need a good CAMERA! Great designer doesn't make good photographer?
Just thought I would share mine as well...
http://bit.ly/9v6AYB
Nice to watch and looking to have the same kind of setting in my home...
It's great to see how someone works. Thanks for placing me on this list :)
Awesome collection, happy to see I made the list as well.
It is also good to see that I am not the only designer still using an older model MacBook Pro. I was starting to think my computer was a dinosaur until I saw this post. It runs great so why replace it? Reassuring to see others who haven't upgraded.
hi，Nikulin:)
your workstation make me feel warm and congenial。but i dont think the little bear enjoy his site there。would you mind give him a roomy place？just a suggest~ :)
Hahaha nice suggestion. The bear does seem a bit squeezed up there. ^^
Hi sin,
It is my wife's bear so I could try to ask her about it, but now we moving to London (I am already here) and I think that this bear will live in a box with others friends for around a six months (-_- ).
Thanks for the mention, guys!
onextrapixel.com - I Bet you can do better!!! :) Get us something nice to read and worth looking into.
Someone is bitter...
This is awesome effort. Congrats Citra Sudiro. This is simply awesome list.
here's another list from my blog of some familiar designers and their workspace:
http://interactiveblend.com/blog/interactive/show-me-what-youre-workin-with-2/
just about money
Very Nice! Where can I get one of those macbook shelves?
Great stand - http://www.raindesigninc.com/mstand.html
I see IKEA furniture is a favorite of all designers =)
All of these workstations and not a single Cintiq 21ux tablet? Interesting.
Seriously is it just me or is this the most boring collection of desks I have ever seen.
When did design become so boring.
Wow, what a collection. I am kinda jealous of the guy at the beach.
Very great collection of designer's workstation... All station are beautiful...
Waaay too many Macs here. 52/88? That's just sad, that over half of all designers don't care about productivity or compatibility or battery life or cost effectiveness or processing power or the many other things Macs lose out on.
Lol, you're just trying to start an argument :)
On that note though, I'm not sure how you call my 8x 2.8ghz core losing out on processing power, if you ask me the fact that I can start work in 20 seconds on my Mac as opposed to 3 minutes on my Windows 7 machine is a pretty good increase in productivity on it's own. In regards to battery life, my Macbook Pro gets 3 hours, not as good as the new ones or as some Windows laptops, but certainly better than plenty as well and more than enough for my needs. Compatibility, well, that's my specialty, and I do it primarily on Mac's. Cost effectiveness is simply in the eye of the beholder, if it gets you more done with less down time but at a higher initial cost, it's probably still more cost effective than a cheaper alternative.
But hey, I'm not trying to argue with you, just putting out why I use Mac's, however, I also use Windows, each have their purpose.
Elliot Jay Stocks's is a beauty
Very good workstations that provide inspiration to each individual artist.
Love seeing other people's work station. It's inspiring! Thanks for the share!
Waaay too many Macs here. 52/88? That's just sad, that over half of all designers don't care about productivity or compatibility or battery life or cost effectiveness or processing power or the many other things Macs lose out on.
Some great workstations people have there! This is giving me plenty of inspiration for my new office that I run my freelance webdesign business out of.
I'm probably going to make my own desk, it has to be as big as possible, while keeping a minimalistic look to it.
Very fantastic...designs and models of workstationss.......really amazing..Thanks for sharing