10 ms·

Multimodal WFH setup: flight SIM, EE lab, and music studio in 60sqft/5.5M²

274 points by brunohaid 1y ago

_fat_santa 1y ago
It's cool but also kinda wild to hire a design firm to figure out the layout of your home office. Personally my home office is very "personal" and one of the things I enjoyed the most is figuring out where everything should go. To me this is the same as hiring a development firm to build you a set of dotfiles.
- brcmthrowaway 1y ago
  This person is probably overemployed and making $1M
  - ubb_server 1y ago
    What makes you think that?
    - isoprophlex 1y ago
      The fact that there's a blog post by a design studio on how they shoved a bunch of shelves, acoustic padding, sixty computer monitors and a flight sim controller into a utility cupboard.
- tobr 1y ago
  If this was a write-up about someone’s personal WFH office setup, it would be pretty cool. Written as a case by a design firm it seems very underwhelming. It just looks like a tiny room crammed with equipment. Wouldn’t you at least go for custom-made shelving to use every last millimeter of the room as well as possible?
  - ajcp 1y ago
    If you read the writeup you'll see that it was part aesthetic choice and price consideration.
- ajcp 1y ago
  The client is the "design firm". The website is for their own firm and they used their own office in their portfolio.
dpc_01234 1y ago
How do you call these plug into holes every inch frames used for this? I could use something like this for related projects.
- cameron_b 1y ago
  I'm guessing you mean the support structure for the desk and shelves, which seems to be a nicer version of something like https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/H-4814/Wide-Span-Storage-Racks/Two-Shelf-Wide-Span-Storage-Rack-Particle-Board-60-x-24-x-36?pricode=WA9689&gadtype=pla&id=H-4814&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=10688098226 https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/H-4814/Wide-Span-Storag... or perhaps the same thing ( in several sizes ) with a coat of gloss paint
- evanjrowley 1y ago
  There really is no precise name for these. Source: A technology hoarder who has too many shelves like this full of junk. Edit: I stand corrected by @bobson381 I have several of these under the Gorilla Rack brand name and they're sold as Industrial Shelving Units. Home Depot in the US also sells these under the Muscle Rack and Edsal brands. These shelves are good, but I caution against using them in rooms with uneven floors (i.e., basement floors) because the feet are not adjustable. The particle board shelf surfaces can also deteriorate easily in moist environments. OP's shelf is one coffee spill away from a ruined shelf. That particle board is also made with formaldehyde and water damage will release it, FYI. I have even more Wire Rack Shelves from various brands, all mostly with interchangable parts. A major brand is Nexel. There's also a lot of good parts available through the Metro brand sold by The Container Store. I appreciate the Wire Rack Shelving for it's modularity, adjustable feet, and also the ability to use caster wheels. You can always cut your own solid shelf surface from whatever material you like. The drawback is these Wire Rack Shelves cost twice as much as the Industrial Shelving Units.
  - dpc_01234 1y ago
    Thanks. Good pointers. I do have a whole rack in a garage kind of like it, but I was hoping I could get something nicer and painted like in the article, ideally with different length elements, so I could make custom furniture from them, and then just cut MDF boards to size or something.
jasonpeacock 1y ago
That's a lot of words for "We put some industrial shelving in a closet with a keyboard and computer monitors, and we made it all beige."
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  How else do you think designers can justify their inflated rates? Wrap it in in a fancy word salad to elevate it and sell it to wealthy urbanites. Reminds me of that scene[1] from the Silicon Valley TV show where that designer was tasked to design a server box and he started the meeting showing random pictures to the CEO with some bongo drum soundtrack in order to "establish a common vocabulary" lol, or the brand manual of the infamous Pepsi logo redesign fail[2] full of made up geometrical nature BS stories that the agency pulled out of their ass to milk Pepsi, which I'm sure is what the satire form Silicon Valley was based on. At this point, I think designers just operate on the basis of "a fool an his money are easily parted". [1] https://youtu.be/qyLv1dQasaY?si=yUwQU-9EQL3QMxbi&t=6 https://youtu.be/qyLv1dQasaY?si=yUwQU-9EQL3QMxbi&t=6 [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/Design/comments/hspqgd/pepsi_logo_redesign_brand_manual_from_2008_is_the/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Design/comments/hspqgd/pepsi_logo_r...
  - loa_in_ 1y ago
    It's not foolish. Design is subjective and it's most often a question with no objectively good answer, so it's between the designer and whoever appraises his output. There's no secret design paradigm that makes everyone happy.
    - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
      >It's not foolish. It is all about fooling the viewer. Like for example seeing some run down old buildings in US or Eastern Europe will make people scoff, but if you show them similar looking run down buildings in South Mediterranean Europe or Japan they will be in awe. It's about perception. >Design is subjective No it isn't. Just like art and people's appearances, there's unanimously objective on what's beautiful and what's ugly. The redesigned Pepsi logo is objectively worse, which is why it was so short lived and reverted back to the original design. People who say there's no such thing as ugly design because it's al subjective are coping hard or trying to sell their design agency.
rlt 1y ago
Very cool, any maybe some people are better at managing clutter, but I would make a huge mess of this space in days. The EE lab would put it over the top for me.
frostburg 1y ago
Very underwhelming keyboard there, given the overall effort.
- gruturo 1y ago
  That Das Keyboard is the only piece in the entire website I didn't quite dislike. But I'm biased as I'm typing this on one (although a Tenkeyless one - it's ridiculous to have a numpad, it's not the 80s). The rest goes from "meh" to "gross" (that fibreboard is getting _nasty_ even with a bit of sweat over a few months, not to mention its raw edge is going to result in blood loss sooner or later)
  - brunohaid 1y ago
    Was concerned about splinters too, but if you compress and treat/seal it a bit, it works quite well, although they do get a bit gross after 2-3 years to the point where you should flip/replace them.
  - frostburg 1y ago
    The rest isn't particularly nice either but I would describe it more as "suboptimal decisions" than lack of effort. They're not bad keyboards but you can get superior custom tenkeyless or even fullsize ones (if you must) without even having to deal with group buys now.
    - nottorp 1y ago
      > superior custom tenkeyless How are tenkeyless keyboards "superior"? Missing keys are a feature now?
      - gruturo 1y ago
        I think the parent poster didn't imply that TKL keyboads are intrinsically superior (on the other hand, unless your task is in the 1% benefiting from a keypad.... they kind of are IMHO, at least they're more portable and don't waste space on a desk), but rather described 2 possible attributes of better keyboards, not necessarily related. On laptops, usually a keypad is an automatic indicator of a terrible product meant for the less knowledgeable audience. The keypad causes the rest of the keyboard to be squished to the left, with the hands now shifted off center and closer than normal. Awful experience every time.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
zevon 1y ago
The contrast between all that fancy equipment and the actual work surface being a cheap-as-can-be fibreboard (that will get nasty quickly and suck up all liquids) with a more or less unfinished edge that will probably feel uncomfortable is a bit too much of the designerly touch for me...
- ahofmann 1y ago
  Man, I got carpal tunnel syndrome just from looking at the edge of that fibreboard. I couldn't work at that "desk" for 20 minutes.
  - brunohaid 1y ago
    Like mentioned in other comments standing desk height, concerned about it initially as well, but gave it a try and quite happy with the surface (it compresses easily and bit of treatment prevents it from getting gross in 3 months).
- pierrefermat1 1y ago
  There is no contrast lol, if you actually consider the other gear choices he made they are all equally terrible. The god awfully un-ergo chair, poor measuring LS50's, junk keyboard......
0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago
Musical equipment in view of the camera, so that checks at least one requirement.
- specproc 1y ago
  My rule of camera positioning is that I've got to have a load of my books as a backdrop.
vanchor3 1y ago
I'm glad they put the two pieces of Blackmagic gear in the $135 rack mount shelf, just to set it on top of the desk in the end.
- brunohaid 1y ago
  Used to be in the rack (bottom left) initially, but fiddling with it down there eventually got too annoying.
perryh2 1y ago
Here is my COVID bathroom office: https://x.com/perryfromsoma/status/1351396588615204872 https://x.com/perryfromsoma/status/1351396588615204872
- tomas789 1y ago
  I love your setup. The ingenuity of such solution is outstanding. I have so many questions but I'm afraid to ask.
- PeterStuer 1y ago
  Why is the chair under the desk facing the wrong way?
brunohaid 1y ago
Oh, didn't think that'd make it to the front page, appreciated! OP and builder here. The website was purely because a friend and I were looking for design work during lockdown and put together a couple of things we recently worked on, but basic design and build was a fun ~6 months solo project. We had a good discussion on https://www.reddit.com/r/architecture/comments/1mlo6hu/trying_to_squeeze_a_lot_into_a_60sqft55m%C2%B2_wfh/ https://www.reddit.com/r/architecture/comments/1mlo6hu/tryin... over the weekend with more details, but also happy to answer any questions here.
- Kiboneu 1y ago
  Hi, where do you get your industrial shelving?
  - brunohaid 1y ago
    https://www.globalindustrial.com/c/storage/shelving/boltless_shelving/commercial_duty_boltless_shelves?pGid=44420&cid=78494#PG-78494-44420 https://www.globalindustrial.com/c/storage/shelving/boltless...
    - dbacar 1y ago
      site down because of us :D
    - doctorhandshake 1y ago
      I have a workbench from GI. It’s built like a tank and looks good, with a Boos Brothers solid maple top. YMMV but when I told them a big part of it came bent in shipping, they DGAF. That was not a good experience.
- DarmokJalad1701 1y ago
  Sick flight sim setup! I basically never sim now because of how much of a hassle it is to get the whole thing setup. And then it just sits taking up space on the desk and I don't use the desktop for anything else for a while.
NoSalt 1y ago
> "Work from home is here to stay" Sadly, this is not true for most of us. :-(
- pm90 1y ago
  While there has been a step down from the pandemic max, we are still at higher levels of WFH than ever before: https://theconversation.com/us-workers-with-remote-friendly-jobs-are-still-working-from-home-nearly-half-the-time-5-years-after-the-pandemic-began-251758 https://theconversation.com/us-workers-with-remote-friendly-...
lbotos 1y ago
At first I couldn't put my finger on why this website layout was beautiful but I was struggling on my 13" macbook: The two column text are too spaced apart, and really should be one column or closer together for readability.
- brunohaid 1y ago
  Is it the line length that's tedious, or the columnar layout itself confusing?
  - lbotos 1y ago
    I think a little bit of both? I think UX wise I'm not expecting two columns on a website in between these "photo spreads".
- nartho 1y ago
  Just your average design studio's website
bee_rider 1y ago
I wonder—style is subjective and I think it looks nice. The floors are pretty and the rug looks comfy. Beige walls are, eh, well, safe pick I guess. Preference disagreement: I absolutely need my workspace to be different from my gaming space, or I’d go totally nuts. But, there’s an objectively correct answer for the placement of the camera, subject, monitors, and window, to avoid glare and getting washed out. Does anyone know if they did it right?
- brunohaid 1y ago
  Took a bit of shuffling around, biggest challenge was getting a somewhat decent frame given the incredibly small space - main camera facing the window had simple Sigma MFT lens that worked in the end, with a hood on to make sure the ring light doesn't diffuse into it.
- bevr1337 1y ago
  > Preference disagreement: I absolutely need my workspace to be different from my gaming space, or I’d go totally nuts Preach. I made this wonderful office for myself. It's got name brand monitor stands, I only need one cable, the desk mat is cute, and there's a huge pegboard for all my work hardware. After a month or so, I preferred working on the kitchen table with a laptop. Brains are funny things.
ajot 1y ago
Reminds me of the Nomadic Furniture book "cubicles". Here's an instructable showing something inspired by it. https://www.instructables.com/The-Perfect-Instructable-building-Man-Cave-Cubicle/ https://www.instructables.com/The-Perfect-Instructable-build...
guhcampos 1y ago
This looks absolutely amazing, but since this is the Internet and people need to complain about stuff, I can't see the knit cloth mat working well with a wheeled chair!
- brunohaid 1y ago
  Haha, very good (and true) observation - but turns out if you practice 6+ months, you develop a knack for pushing chairs over uneven terrain.
varispeed 1y ago
I wouldn't be able to work in such a space for long. It kind of "squeezes the brain" if I can paint such picture what it feels. Like walls are pushing your head in and you can't think and focus. Unfortunately such situation, in countries where space is at massive premium, leads to wasted human potential. People would love to have hobbies, experiment but simple lack of space very much prevent that. So if your parents are not rich or you yourself don't have a job that could let you rent a workshop or studio, then it is extremely frustrating and leads to depression. I know someone who got to the point of suicide, because he couldn't find any way to get space to pursue his interests. He felt like an absolute failure and that the world didn't want him to exist.
- brunohaid 1y ago
  Hard to respond with something help - and/or meaningful, but still: my whole adult life oscillated (OK, oscillates) between being in the most incredible spaces and really shit situations, like being dependent on friends to crash on their sofas, live in literal garages, rebuild abandoned SROs etc for months while friends I grew up with had homes, kids, families etc. I just got lucky to be delusional / screwed up enough in just the right ways to keep going. It's really hard to overcome that feeling once it's there, but you somehow have to find that space in yourself and through others. Some of the most talented and skilled people I know live in the weirdest places, but somehow managed to find their place. If you're lucky to live in a big city, check out spaces like Noisebridge or Resistor, or whatever your local equivalent is. If that's not an option, maybe the internet can help. Don't know if for example engineering is your thing, but the reason I respect folks like IMSAI Guy or bigclivedotcom on Youtube so much isn't just that they really know what they're talking about, they also seem like really decent people and found their place. They don't seem to be particularly rich or fancy, and I'm sure they have their own stuff to deal with in their lives, but they kept going until they found their place. Long rant, hope it helps somehow/somewhat.
- nottorp 1y ago
  Hmm. My home office is about the same length but double the width (room is like 10 sq meters). It only has computers and not music gear/flight sim controllers though, so less cluttered. And a proper ergonomic chair :) But now that I think of it, most of the time I spend in there I'm sitting at my chair and looking at the monitors. I never look back. So I'm basically using the same space as this office. Maybe subconsciously knowing i have some space behind me before I hit the wall helps...
koinedad 1y ago
I was looking for the multimodal LLM homelab…got really confused for a second
djtriptych 1y ago
Love the term multimodal WFH. Like you I have diverse, equipment-laden hobbies: guitar/piano/dj/drums/photography and work from home. It's really hard to feel like you can quickly get to all of those activities, without reconfiguring -anything- and creating spaces tuned to all those things. Love that this approach is easy to change w/ the industrial wall shelving. Also appreciate touching on some of the specialized equipment that tends to come into play.
- brunohaid 1y ago
  That was one of the weirdest effects of the space - it almost felt like transitioning from affairs to a marriage, in a good way. Before that, I often used to work out of random / public places, and I when I got really stuck just change scenery. Being able to switch modes built that weird sense of home, knowing that when I get stuck, I can switch modes for a bit and do / work on something else, and no matter what the space would be there for me. Hard to describe without sounding too prosaic, but really glad to have built it.
mmmlinux 1y ago
Those are some dusty remotes.
- brunohaid 1y ago
  It took my about 3 days to get over it after seeing it on the final images.
ge96 1y ago
Something interesting with the pictures the grading maybe, they seem matte how I'd describe it amateurly, it looks good
- brunohaid 1y ago
  Thanks! Had a really good camera & lenses for the day (Hasselblad X1D II with Zeiss Otus and Canon TS-E 17mm), and then post was mostly reducing colors besides brown/green/red hues a bit.
rcpt 1y ago
But where's the giant box of wires go?
- brunohaid 1y ago
  If you swear at them long enough they start disappearing... Mostly bottom of back shelves and behind vertical shelf beams.
pm90 1y ago
Its interesting how many of the comments here are criticizing the cost, the decision to commission a design firm, or that it just wouldn't work for them. In which case, great! You can choose however you want to do your home office. This person put in effort to both deliberately design their home office and to share it with everyone. That's pretty amazing! And even if I might not go the same way, there are def some very cool ideas from this that I will certainly look into : )
- brunohaid 1y ago
  Appreciated!
- specproc 1y ago
  Agreed. Too much negativity in the thread. I love seeing other people's offices, and having a blog that talks through the design decisions is great. I've very different aesthetics and gear, but took ideas from this for sure. Loved the conferencing setup, for example.
sirnonw 1y ago
comfy
jahrichie 1y ago
What a peaceful setup. Which monitors are those?
- brunohaid 1y ago
  Eizo CS2740, really happy with them. Weird anecdote: they weren't available in the US at the time yet, so I got them off amazon.co.jp, and it was the most impressive thoughtful multi-layer cardboard packaging I ever got from any reseller. Probably my disdain for Amazon worker treatment and appreciation for Japanese care no matter what, all standing there in one impressive confusing package.
larodi 1y ago
Next is - have it all in camper, solar, satellite and all.
dmillar 1y ago
Well, I see we have very similar hobbies and careers! Nice setup.
stavros 1y ago
This looks cool, but I really don't understand the constraints here. You have high tens of thousands of dollars of gear, but can't afford a space larger than a closet for it? Where did the space constraint come from? Was it just to see if you could do it? I'm just a bit perplexed as to how this particular combination of things came together.
- Uehreka 1y ago
  I hate to be a quote-TFA-and-say-nothing-else guy but: > Location: Brooklyn, NY
  - stavros 1y ago
    Yes, and?
    - nottorp 1y ago
      Guessing doubling the area of that room would cost upwards of half a million, not tens of thousands.
    - rodnim 1y ago
      They clearly stated "and nothing else". ;)
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
ctz 1y ago
I can already feel the unfinished edge of the desk chipboard on my wrists. Such a premium finish!
skylissue 1y ago
Farting in here >>>
PeterStuer 1y ago
"Given the spatial constraint, it became immediately clear that we'd need to increase the available horizontal space by layering shelves vertically, which yielded more area than the entire room floor space while only taking up a third of it." This must be the most convoluted way I have ever seen for simply saying "I've put up some shelves".
esskay 1y ago
Maybe it's just me but this looks like a nightmare to get any work done. Way too cluttered and uncomfortable looking. That "Desk" if it can be called that just looks like someone nipped down to their local DIY shop and picked up some budget garage storage, slapped a bit of rough cut wood on it and called it a day.
jefc1111 1y ago
A little OT: It seems that so few studio monitors (speakers) have grilles. I have kids and I don't want to need to trust them, or to need to ban them. I believe Genelec have grilles but the price is a little high for me for the models with decent-sized drivers. Given that Genelec are so popular, I can't imagine presence-of-grille presents a fundamental compromise, sound-wise. KRK seem to have grilles on theirs, but I want something with a flatter sound. Any HN'ers out there got any tips?
- brunohaid 1y ago
  The KEF come with cloth covers, but they're too elastic to deter a determined toddler. The smaller Genelec like the 8040's are quite protected and show up on somewhat trusted second hand sites like reverb.com for about ~$500-800 pair every now and then, which is hard to beat given the built in amps.
  - jefc1111 1y ago
    Used 8040s is a good call. Nice price point (bit higher in UK though I think).
inatreecrown2 1y ago
speakers should ideally look down the long way of the room...
HelloUsername 1y ago
(2020) ?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- gus_massa 1y ago
  It appears in the capture in 2022 of the main page https://web.archive.org/web/20220215164019/https://sdo.group/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220215164019/https://sdo.group... but perhaps they posted it before that.
sebastien_b 1y ago
[dead]
eawgewag 1y ago
I love small space office builds! I also have a tiny den. I would love to see more inspiration of how people use that kind of space, especially if it's (sadly) windowless, which I think makes it pretty hard
tracker1 1y ago
Nice to see what people put together... I'm hoping to do some custom desk builds etc in the next year or so myself. My biggest change for my home setup has been moving away from a KVM with work and personal computers on a single desk to multiple desks where I'm physically moved. I prefer to have my feet on the ground, so don't like the drafting chair or barstool foot rests. I've also moved to 45" (U)WQHD displays (3440x1440) for my work spots. I have two Xeneon Flex and another display of the same size that's by LG. It's kind of like 2x large 3:4 aspect displays glued together mostly pinning apps to half the screen on one side or the other. My vision is pretty bad, so having the larger pixels helps a lot for my visibility and being able to function. It's also worth noting that I didn't pay full retail for any of the screens. The Xeneon goes on sale for about half price every couple months on Corsair's site, and I picked up the LG as a return from BestBuy for about $550, which was a pretty good deal for what it is. I also tend to prefer physical switch keyboards, currently backlit Das keyboards with Cherry-MX Brown switches. My mouse is a Logitech with a weighted scroll wheel. I do like the Unicomp keyboards more, but they're a bit more noisy so I settle with the browns.
ornornor 1y ago
The space looks nice but that seats looks very uncomfortable.

274 points by brunohaid 1y ago

It's cool but also kinda wild to hire a design firm to figure out the layout of your home office. Personally my home office is very "personal" and one of the things I enjoyed the most is figuring out where everything should go. To me this is the same as hiring a development firm to build you a set of dotfiles.

brcmthrowaway 1y ago
This person is probably overemployed and making $1M
- ubb_server 1y ago
  What makes you think that?
  - isoprophlex 1y ago
    The fact that there's a blog post by a design studio on how they shoved a bunch of shelves, acoustic padding, sixty computer monitors and a flight sim controller into a utility cupboard.
tobr 1y ago
If this was a write-up about someone’s personal WFH office setup, it would be pretty cool. Written as a case by a design firm it seems very underwhelming. It just looks like a tiny room crammed with equipment. Wouldn’t you at least go for custom-made shelving to use every last millimeter of the room as well as possible?
- ajcp 1y ago
  If you read the writeup you'll see that it was part aesthetic choice and price consideration.
ajcp 1y ago
The client is the "design firm". The website is for their own firm and they used their own office in their portfolio.

dpc_01234 1y ago

How do you call these plug into holes every inch frames used for this? I could use something like this for related projects.

cameron_b 1y ago
I'm guessing you mean the support structure for the desk and shelves, which seems to be a nicer version of something like https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/H-4814/Wide-Span-Storage-Racks/Two-Shelf-Wide-Span-Storage-Rack-Particle-Board-60-x-24-x-36?pricode=WA9689&gadtype=pla&id=H-4814&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=10688098226 https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/H-4814/Wide-Span-Storag... or perhaps the same thing ( in several sizes ) with a coat of gloss paint
evanjrowley 1y ago
There really is no precise name for these. Source: A technology hoarder who has too many shelves like this full of junk. Edit: I stand corrected by @bobson381 I have several of these under the Gorilla Rack brand name and they're sold as Industrial Shelving Units. Home Depot in the US also sells these under the Muscle Rack and Edsal brands. These shelves are good, but I caution against using them in rooms with uneven floors (i.e., basement floors) because the feet are not adjustable. The particle board shelf surfaces can also deteriorate easily in moist environments. OP's shelf is one coffee spill away from a ruined shelf. That particle board is also made with formaldehyde and water damage will release it, FYI. I have even more Wire Rack Shelves from various brands, all mostly with interchangable parts. A major brand is Nexel. There's also a lot of good parts available through the Metro brand sold by The Container Store. I appreciate the Wire Rack Shelving for it's modularity, adjustable feet, and also the ability to use caster wheels. You can always cut your own solid shelf surface from whatever material you like. The drawback is these Wire Rack Shelves cost twice as much as the Industrial Shelving Units.
- dpc_01234 1y ago
  Thanks. Good pointers. I do have a whole rack in a garage kind of like it, but I was hoping I could get something nicer and painted like in the article, ideally with different length elements, so I could make custom furniture from them, and then just cut MDF boards to size or something.

jasonpeacock 1y ago

That's a lot of words for "We put some industrial shelving in a closet with a keyboard and computer monitors, and we made it all beige."

FirmwareBurner 1y ago
How else do you think designers can justify their inflated rates? Wrap it in in a fancy word salad to elevate it and sell it to wealthy urbanites. Reminds me of that scene[1] from the Silicon Valley TV show where that designer was tasked to design a server box and he started the meeting showing random pictures to the CEO with some bongo drum soundtrack in order to "establish a common vocabulary" lol, or the brand manual of the infamous Pepsi logo redesign fail[2] full of made up geometrical nature BS stories that the agency pulled out of their ass to milk Pepsi, which I'm sure is what the satire form Silicon Valley was based on. At this point, I think designers just operate on the basis of "a fool an his money are easily parted". [1] https://youtu.be/qyLv1dQasaY?si=yUwQU-9EQL3QMxbi&t=6 https://youtu.be/qyLv1dQasaY?si=yUwQU-9EQL3QMxbi&t=6 [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/Design/comments/hspqgd/pepsi_logo_redesign_brand_manual_from_2008_is_the/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Design/comments/hspqgd/pepsi_logo_r...
- loa_in_ 1y ago
  It's not foolish. Design is subjective and it's most often a question with no objectively good answer, so it's between the designer and whoever appraises his output. There's no secret design paradigm that makes everyone happy.
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    >It's not foolish. It is all about fooling the viewer. Like for example seeing some run down old buildings in US or Eastern Europe will make people scoff, but if you show them similar looking run down buildings in South Mediterranean Europe or Japan they will be in awe. It's about perception. >Design is subjective No it isn't. Just like art and people's appearances, there's unanimously objective on what's beautiful and what's ugly. The redesigned Pepsi logo is objectively worse, which is why it was so short lived and reverted back to the original design. People who say there's no such thing as ugly design because it's al subjective are coping hard or trying to sell their design agency.

rlt 1y ago

Very cool, any maybe some people are better at managing clutter, but I would make a huge mess of this space in days. The EE lab would put it over the top for me.

frostburg 1y ago

Very underwhelming keyboard there, given the overall effort.

gruturo 1y ago
That Das Keyboard is the only piece in the entire website I didn't quite dislike. But I'm biased as I'm typing this on one (although a Tenkeyless one - it's ridiculous to have a numpad, it's not the 80s). The rest goes from "meh" to "gross" (that fibreboard is getting _nasty_ even with a bit of sweat over a few months, not to mention its raw edge is going to result in blood loss sooner or later)
- brunohaid 1y ago
  Was concerned about splinters too, but if you compress and treat/seal it a bit, it works quite well, although they do get a bit gross after 2-3 years to the point where you should flip/replace them.
- frostburg 1y ago
  The rest isn't particularly nice either but I would describe it more as "suboptimal decisions" than lack of effort. They're not bad keyboards but you can get superior custom tenkeyless or even fullsize ones (if you must) without even having to deal with group buys now.
  - nottorp 1y ago
    > superior custom tenkeyless How are tenkeyless keyboards "superior"? Missing keys are a feature now?
    - gruturo 1y ago
      I think the parent poster didn't imply that TKL keyboads are intrinsically superior (on the other hand, unless your task is in the 1% benefiting from a keypad.... they kind of are IMHO, at least they're more portable and don't waste space on a desk), but rather described 2 possible attributes of better keyboards, not necessarily related. On laptops, usually a keypad is an automatic indicator of a terrible product meant for the less knowledgeable audience. The keypad causes the rest of the keyboard to be squished to the left, with the hands now shifted off center and closer than normal. Awful experience every time.

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zevon 1y ago

The contrast between all that fancy equipment and the actual work surface being a cheap-as-can-be fibreboard (that will get nasty quickly and suck up all liquids) with a more or less unfinished edge that will probably feel uncomfortable is a bit too much of the designerly touch for me...

ahofmann 1y ago
Man, I got carpal tunnel syndrome just from looking at the edge of that fibreboard. I couldn't work at that "desk" for 20 minutes.
- brunohaid 1y ago
  Like mentioned in other comments standing desk height, concerned about it initially as well, but gave it a try and quite happy with the surface (it compresses easily and bit of treatment prevents it from getting gross in 3 months).
pierrefermat1 1y ago
There is no contrast lol, if you actually consider the other gear choices he made they are all equally terrible. The god awfully un-ergo chair, poor measuring LS50's, junk keyboard......

0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago

Musical equipment in view of the camera, so that checks at least one requirement.

specproc 1y ago
My rule of camera positioning is that I've got to have a load of my books as a backdrop.

vanchor3 1y ago

I'm glad they put the two pieces of Blackmagic gear in the $135 rack mount shelf, just to set it on top of the desk in the end.

brunohaid 1y ago
Used to be in the rack (bottom left) initially, but fiddling with it down there eventually got too annoying.

perryh2 1y ago

Here is my COVID bathroom office: https://x.com/perryfromsoma/status/1351396588615204872 https://x.com/perryfromsoma/status/1351396588615204872

tomas789 1y ago
I love your setup. The ingenuity of such solution is outstanding. I have so many questions but I'm afraid to ask.
PeterStuer 1y ago
Why is the chair under the desk facing the wrong way?

brunohaid 1y ago

Oh, didn't think that'd make it to the front page, appreciated! OP and builder here. The website was purely because a friend and I were looking for design work during lockdown and put together a couple of things we recently worked on, but basic design and build was a fun ~6 months solo project. We had a good discussion on https://www.reddit.com/r/architecture/comments/1mlo6hu/trying_to_squeeze_a_lot_into_a_60sqft55m%C2%B2_wfh/ https://www.reddit.com/r/architecture/comments/1mlo6hu/tryin... over the weekend with more details, but also happy to answer any questions here.

Kiboneu 1y ago
Hi, where do you get your industrial shelving?
- brunohaid 1y ago
  https://www.globalindustrial.com/c/storage/shelving/boltless_shelving/commercial_duty_boltless_shelves?pGid=44420&cid=78494#PG-78494-44420 https://www.globalindustrial.com/c/storage/shelving/boltless...
  - dbacar 1y ago
    site down because of us :D
  - doctorhandshake 1y ago
    I have a workbench from GI. It’s built like a tank and looks good, with a Boos Brothers solid maple top. YMMV but when I told them a big part of it came bent in shipping, they DGAF. That was not a good experience.
DarmokJalad1701 1y ago
Sick flight sim setup! I basically never sim now because of how much of a hassle it is to get the whole thing setup. And then it just sits taking up space on the desk and I don't use the desktop for anything else for a while.

NoSalt 1y ago

> "Work from home is here to stay" Sadly, this is not true for most of us. :-(

pm90 1y ago
While there has been a step down from the pandemic max, we are still at higher levels of WFH than ever before: https://theconversation.com/us-workers-with-remote-friendly-jobs-are-still-working-from-home-nearly-half-the-time-5-years-after-the-pandemic-began-251758 https://theconversation.com/us-workers-with-remote-friendly-...

lbotos 1y ago

At first I couldn't put my finger on why this website layout was beautiful but I was struggling on my 13" macbook: The two column text are too spaced apart, and really should be one column or closer together for readability.

brunohaid 1y ago
Is it the line length that's tedious, or the columnar layout itself confusing?
- lbotos 1y ago
  I think a little bit of both? I think UX wise I'm not expecting two columns on a website in between these "photo spreads".
nartho 1y ago
Just your average design studio's website

bee_rider 1y ago

I wonder—style is subjective and I think it looks nice. The floors are pretty and the rug looks comfy. Beige walls are, eh, well, safe pick I guess. Preference disagreement: I absolutely need my workspace to be different from my gaming space, or I’d go totally nuts. But, there’s an objectively correct answer for the placement of the camera, subject, monitors, and window, to avoid glare and getting washed out. Does anyone know if they did it right?

brunohaid 1y ago
Took a bit of shuffling around, biggest challenge was getting a somewhat decent frame given the incredibly small space - main camera facing the window had simple Sigma MFT lens that worked in the end, with a hood on to make sure the ring light doesn't diffuse into it.
bevr1337 1y ago
> Preference disagreement: I absolutely need my workspace to be different from my gaming space, or I’d go totally nuts Preach. I made this wonderful office for myself. It's got name brand monitor stands, I only need one cable, the desk mat is cute, and there's a huge pegboard for all my work hardware. After a month or so, I preferred working on the kitchen table with a laptop. Brains are funny things.

ajot 1y ago

Reminds me of the Nomadic Furniture book "cubicles". Here's an instructable showing something inspired by it. https://www.instructables.com/The-Perfect-Instructable-building-Man-Cave-Cubicle/ https://www.instructables.com/The-Perfect-Instructable-build...

guhcampos 1y ago

This looks absolutely amazing, but since this is the Internet and people need to complain about stuff, I can't see the knit cloth mat working well with a wheeled chair!

brunohaid 1y ago
Haha, very good (and true) observation - but turns out if you practice 6+ months, you develop a knack for pushing chairs over uneven terrain.

varispeed 1y ago

I wouldn't be able to work in such a space for long. It kind of "squeezes the brain" if I can paint such picture what it feels. Like walls are pushing your head in and you can't think and focus. Unfortunately such situation, in countries where space is at massive premium, leads to wasted human potential. People would love to have hobbies, experiment but simple lack of space very much prevent that. So if your parents are not rich or you yourself don't have a job that could let you rent a workshop or studio, then it is extremely frustrating and leads to depression. I know someone who got to the point of suicide, because he couldn't find any way to get space to pursue his interests. He felt like an absolute failure and that the world didn't want him to exist.

brunohaid 1y ago
Hard to respond with something help - and/or meaningful, but still: my whole adult life oscillated (OK, oscillates) between being in the most incredible spaces and really shit situations, like being dependent on friends to crash on their sofas, live in literal garages, rebuild abandoned SROs etc for months while friends I grew up with had homes, kids, families etc. I just got lucky to be delusional / screwed up enough in just the right ways to keep going. It's really hard to overcome that feeling once it's there, but you somehow have to find that space in yourself and through others. Some of the most talented and skilled people I know live in the weirdest places, but somehow managed to find their place. If you're lucky to live in a big city, check out spaces like Noisebridge or Resistor, or whatever your local equivalent is. If that's not an option, maybe the internet can help. Don't know if for example engineering is your thing, but the reason I respect folks like IMSAI Guy or bigclivedotcom on Youtube so much isn't just that they really know what they're talking about, they also seem like really decent people and found their place. They don't seem to be particularly rich or fancy, and I'm sure they have their own stuff to deal with in their lives, but they kept going until they found their place. Long rant, hope it helps somehow/somewhat.
nottorp 1y ago
Hmm. My home office is about the same length but double the width (room is like 10 sq meters). It only has computers and not music gear/flight sim controllers though, so less cluttered. And a proper ergonomic chair :) But now that I think of it, most of the time I spend in there I'm sitting at my chair and looking at the monitors. I never look back. So I'm basically using the same space as this office. Maybe subconsciously knowing i have some space behind me before I hit the wall helps...

koinedad 1y ago

I was looking for the multimodal LLM homelab…got really confused for a second

djtriptych 1y ago

Love the term multimodal WFH. Like you I have diverse, equipment-laden hobbies: guitar/piano/dj/drums/photography and work from home. It's really hard to feel like you can quickly get to all of those activities, without reconfiguring -anything- and creating spaces tuned to all those things. Love that this approach is easy to change w/ the industrial wall shelving. Also appreciate touching on some of the specialized equipment that tends to come into play.

brunohaid 1y ago
That was one of the weirdest effects of the space - it almost felt like transitioning from affairs to a marriage, in a good way. Before that, I often used to work out of random / public places, and I when I got really stuck just change scenery. Being able to switch modes built that weird sense of home, knowing that when I get stuck, I can switch modes for a bit and do / work on something else, and no matter what the space would be there for me. Hard to describe without sounding too prosaic, but really glad to have built it.

mmmlinux 1y ago

Those are some dusty remotes.

brunohaid 1y ago
It took my about 3 days to get over it after seeing it on the final images.

ge96 1y ago

Something interesting with the pictures the grading maybe, they seem matte how I'd describe it amateurly, it looks good

brunohaid 1y ago
Thanks! Had a really good camera & lenses for the day (Hasselblad X1D II with Zeiss Otus and Canon TS-E 17mm), and then post was mostly reducing colors besides brown/green/red hues a bit.

rcpt 1y ago

But where's the giant box of wires go?

brunohaid 1y ago
If you swear at them long enough they start disappearing... Mostly bottom of back shelves and behind vertical shelf beams.

pm90 1y ago

Its interesting how many of the comments here are criticizing the cost, the decision to commission a design firm, or that it just wouldn't work for them. In which case, great! You can choose however you want to do your home office. This person put in effort to both deliberately design their home office and to share it with everyone. That's pretty amazing! And even if I might not go the same way, there are def some very cool ideas from this that I will certainly look into : )

brunohaid 1y ago
Appreciated!
specproc 1y ago
Agreed. Too much negativity in the thread. I love seeing other people's offices, and having a blog that talks through the design decisions is great. I've very different aesthetics and gear, but took ideas from this for sure. Loved the conferencing setup, for example.

sirnonw 1y ago

comfy

jahrichie 1y ago

What a peaceful setup. Which monitors are those?

brunohaid 1y ago
Eizo CS2740, really happy with them. Weird anecdote: they weren't available in the US at the time yet, so I got them off amazon.co.jp, and it was the most impressive thoughtful multi-layer cardboard packaging I ever got from any reseller. Probably my disdain for Amazon worker treatment and appreciation for Japanese care no matter what, all standing there in one impressive confusing package.

larodi 1y ago

Next is - have it all in camper, solar, satellite and all.

dmillar 1y ago

Well, I see we have very similar hobbies and careers! Nice setup.

stavros 1y ago

This looks cool, but I really don't understand the constraints here. You have high tens of thousands of dollars of gear, but can't afford a space larger than a closet for it? Where did the space constraint come from? Was it just to see if you could do it? I'm just a bit perplexed as to how this particular combination of things came together.

Uehreka 1y ago
I hate to be a quote-TFA-and-say-nothing-else guy but: > Location: Brooklyn, NY
- stavros 1y ago
  Yes, and?
  - nottorp 1y ago
    Guessing doubling the area of that room would cost upwards of half a million, not tens of thousands.
  - rodnim 1y ago
    They clearly stated "and nothing else". ;)

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ctz 1y ago

I can already feel the unfinished edge of the desk chipboard on my wrists. Such a premium finish!

skylissue 1y ago

Farting in here >>>

PeterStuer 1y ago

"Given the spatial constraint, it became immediately clear that we'd need to increase the available horizontal space by layering shelves vertically, which yielded more area than the entire room floor space while only taking up a third of it." This must be the most convoluted way I have ever seen for simply saying "I've put up some shelves".

esskay 1y ago

Maybe it's just me but this looks like a nightmare to get any work done. Way too cluttered and uncomfortable looking. That "Desk" if it can be called that just looks like someone nipped down to their local DIY shop and picked up some budget garage storage, slapped a bit of rough cut wood on it and called it a day.

jefc1111 1y ago

A little OT: It seems that so few studio monitors (speakers) have grilles. I have kids and I don't want to need to trust them, or to need to ban them. I believe Genelec have grilles but the price is a little high for me for the models with decent-sized drivers. Given that Genelec are so popular, I can't imagine presence-of-grille presents a fundamental compromise, sound-wise. KRK seem to have grilles on theirs, but I want something with a flatter sound. Any HN'ers out there got any tips?

brunohaid 1y ago
The KEF come with cloth covers, but they're too elastic to deter a determined toddler. The smaller Genelec like the 8040's are quite protected and show up on somewhat trusted second hand sites like reverb.com for about ~$500-800 pair every now and then, which is hard to beat given the built in amps.
- jefc1111 1y ago
  Used 8040s is a good call. Nice price point (bit higher in UK though I think).

inatreecrown2 1y ago

speakers should ideally look down the long way of the room...

HelloUsername 1y ago

(2020) ?

deleted 1y ago
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gus_massa 1y ago
It appears in the capture in 2022 of the main page https://web.archive.org/web/20220215164019/https://sdo.group/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220215164019/https://sdo.group... but perhaps they posted it before that.

sebastien_b 1y ago

[dead]

eawgewag 1y ago

I love small space office builds! I also have a tiny den. I would love to see more inspiration of how people use that kind of space, especially if it's (sadly) windowless, which I think makes it pretty hard

tracker1 1y ago

Nice to see what people put together... I'm hoping to do some custom desk builds etc in the next year or so myself. My biggest change for my home setup has been moving away from a KVM with work and personal computers on a single desk to multiple desks where I'm physically moved. I prefer to have my feet on the ground, so don't like the drafting chair or barstool foot rests. I've also moved to 45" (U)WQHD displays (3440x1440) for my work spots. I have two Xeneon Flex and another display of the same size that's by LG. It's kind of like 2x large 3:4 aspect displays glued together mostly pinning apps to half the screen on one side or the other. My vision is pretty bad, so having the larger pixels helps a lot for my visibility and being able to function. It's also worth noting that I didn't pay full retail for any of the screens. The Xeneon goes on sale for about half price every couple months on Corsair's site, and I picked up the LG as a return from BestBuy for about $550, which was a pretty good deal for what it is. I also tend to prefer physical switch keyboards, currently backlit Das keyboards with Cherry-MX Brown switches. My mouse is a Logitech with a weighted scroll wheel. I do like the Unicomp keyboards more, but they're a bit more noisy so I settle with the browns.

ornornor 1y ago

The space looks nice but that seats looks very uncomfortable.