Hello readers! My name is Crystal Yung and I am a new contributor to the OnahJung blog and marketing assistant for Studio Jonah. I am an architecture student studying at the University of Waterloo. The feature image (at the top) is our first year studio. (Photograph is taken by my classmate, Lisa Huang).
I graduate next year so I’ve been exploring the design industry. I’ve been fortunate to have been able to gather experience in varying work spaces through my co-op education.
This led me to think about the importance of having a personal design area whether it’s at school, at work, or at home. This, respectively, consists of being the student, the employed and, dare I say, the liberated.
So what’s on your desk(s)? I’ve noticed the commonalities between each of my work spaces usually consist of the following, in varied quantities:
- Post-its
- Cups (we all need the caffeine at some point)
- Snacks (I know, don’t eat near the laptop, but who are we kidding?)
- Stacks and stacks of paper
- Headphones
- Notebooks & sketchbooks & reference books
- Pens, highlighters, pencils and markers
One particular research showed that clean spaces seem to encourage one to do what was expected and comparatively, people in a ‘messy’ (I like to call mine organized chaos) environments seem to inspire more creativity. Interestingly too was when participants were asked to choose an innovative or traditional product, people in the messy room preferred the new object. It could imply that disorderly environment encourages unconventionality.
The style of the personal work space unknowingly affects our thinking abilities, emotional state, and our workflow so it’s crucial to create a balance that perfectly matches our own individual cognition of how we work wherever we are! How does your work space look like? I’d be interested to see a variety of how as designers (or anyone for that matter) work, let me know!
Life Outside of Design Studio 
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