Calen Knauf
1.) What is your name and where in the WWW (Whole Wide World) do you live?
Calen: My name is D. Calen Knauf and I live in Vancouver British Columbia.
2.) What do you do for a living, what pays the bills? And what is the thing you do when you are not doing the thing that pays the bills?
Calen: Graphic Design pays the bills. And when I am not doing that most of the time I am skateboarding.
3.) How much of what you do, personally or professionally, gets done at the work space featured?
Calen: My workload is split between the two desks. I do all the analogue work for my design at the big desk, such as thumb-nailing and any hand done graphic production. From there everything goes to the small desk for its digitizing.
4.) Typically, what time of the day do you normally find yourself at this desk, and for how long? Night owl, early bird?
Calen: So random. I could be up early, or not be at it all on some days. I work in the day or at night depending on work loads and deadlines. But if its raining out your likely to find me working.
5.) How much of what gets done at your desk is for work, how much is it to scratch your own creative itch?
Calen: Most of it is for work, but the work I do does a good job of scratching that itch. Many of the clients I work for let me kinda go nuts.
6.) What are the essentials that can be found on your desk more times than not? How about those items just out of reach or out of sight? If it’s not on top of your desk what are the things you most often grab out of a top draw or cabinet
Calen: The items on either desk never change. The drawing desk always has 3 rulers and a type gauge, the lamp, my sketch book and the book I use to keep track of my ongoing projects. The computer desk always has the monitor, MacBook, computer tablet, pen and iPod. Thats it.
Oh, and those 2 ceramic lumps, which are just a couple of ceramic sculptures that have handles inside so when you put them on your hands you pretty much become no help to anyone. It’s like wearing headphones on the skytrain so strangers dont talk to you, except in a more physical way. Off the desk I use that bobby trolley to keep markers, pens, Exacto knives and other similar items in. Im usually using Exacto knives the most. Thats easily the next most used item in a designers arsenal aside from a pen.
7.) What beverage/food/snack can one usually find at your desk, and why?
Calen: Mostly just that bottle of water in the picture. I hate to eat and work. I feel like if your eating and working it makes working hard and your food not as enjoyable. I’d rather just take a break to grab a bite to eat.
8.) Do you have any reasoning or anecdotes that lend some insight into why your desk is setup the way it is, or the thinking behind certain item(s)? How about the things around your desks? Decoration, wall art, figurines, statues, etc? Any particular reason behind those?
Calen: For the computer desk I need two monitors. Once you start with two you cant go back to a single screen. Any programs you run you can have all your palettes on one screen and an open working space on the other. The tablet is another thing, I cant go back to a mouse now. As far as I am concerned nothing beats a tablet. As for as the big desk, that’s all the thinking that is behind it, basically It just needs to be big and flat. In fact if I had more space it would be bigger, but I am not sure it would get any flatter.
Around my desk I only have two pieces of “art” around my space, both of them posters, one of which I did. It’s there because I wanted something I designed to be on my wall. The other is a Boogie photograph, and the case it came in signed by him. He’s a great photographer and a cool guy. Me and a friend of mine put up his posters for him when he had a show in Vancouver. While we were putting them up a cop tried to arrest me for some graffiti “issues” I had in the past, but I talked my way out of it. Boogie was pretty stoked by the story.
9.) How much of what you do, or aspire to do, influences your desk setup, tangibly and intangibly.
Calen: I like a really tidy and organized space. Don’t get me wrong, when I do work I wont shy away from getting it messy, but you won’t find my office out of grid formation for longer than a day.
10.) Are you a Mac or are you a PC? What machine(s) are setup and used at your desk? If you are a little bit of both tell us why. How about any other tech gear that can be found at your desk or in your home?
Calen: Mac all the way! I grew up on the Mac because my dad was a designer. Other kids used to make fun of me because you couldn’t really play the more popular games on them. Now everyones either has one or wants one. I run a 2GHz MacBook with 2GB of RAM connected to a 23” Apple Cinema Display. At the time I bought my MacBook the only difference between a MacBook and a MacBook Pro was the graphics card, display size, and price. Since I don’t really have an overwhelming need use for a beefy graphics card, and I run an external Cinema Display, neither of those two really factored in much to my decision. But now that CS4 more capably utilizes the power of the graphics card I quickly find myself leaning towards purchasing a new MacBook Pro. I also have a 1TB Neil Poulton Lacie external drive and a 250GB Lacie drive for backing up the MacBook.
Other than that, just the tablet. The tablet I use is a Wacom Intuos3 9.5x12. The iPod is a touch model, mostly because the iPhone has to get considerably smaller before I would consider getting one. I’m currently on my 3rd Samsung P300 and I’m plenty happy with it.
11.) What’s the one piece of gear you could not live without?
Calen: The Walcom Intuos Tablet for sure. The tablet just makes working feel so much more natural. It makes going from sketching an idea to producing it on a computer not such a harsh step.
12.) What piece of gear cannot be found on your desk, but you wish it could be?
Calen: The Wacom Cintiq tablet. That thing is bad ass.
13.) Software; what do you use more often than not. What helps you get the job done? And what do you not use, but hope one day to incorporate in your workflow?
Calen: I run all the apps that make up Adobe CS3 at the moment. I’ve heard that that CS5 is on some magic level now so I’m going to have to get that before I upgrade my Mac.
14.) If you could change one thing about your desk, or the room it is currently in, what would that be?
Calen: Bigger, waaaay bigger, the room, the desks, all bigger. Also I would love to have some sturdier desks. They are all Ikea desks and while Ikea DESIGNS some decent pieces, they seem to PRODUCE crap. All of their furniture wears out so quickly. As I write this my tables are starting to get these small bubbles under the laminate after just a year of use. I’m usually a real stickler for funiture so I feel my office shouild fall in line with the rest of my house. I’m a strong believer in buying original, which means I’m not readdy to drop a couple grand on office desks quite yet.
15.) Workspace Breakdown;
Think of as many things as possible that comprise the setup of your office or workspace, anything from the paint on the walls to the floor mat your chair rolls on, and list them out. Who makes your desk, how about the cabinet next to your desk, your lamp, the overhead light fixture? Anything and everything you can see in the pictures shown, give as much color and background on these items as time and memory permits.
Calen:
- All of the chairs in the office, of which there are 3 total, are Herman Millers. The two matching ones are Eames upholstered side shells on group aluminum basses and I paid around $150 for both (Smokin deal)!
- My main chair at the computer desk is an Eames Group Aluminum Chair with grey hopsack upholstery that matches the other two chairs. It’s my favorite office chair of all time and I paid $350 for it (an even “smokier” deal than the other ones considering that these chairs usually run around 1500 bucks).
- All the desks are Ikea. They look good but the table tops are cheap and wont last long.
- The Joe Colombo Boby Trolley by B-Line is an essential. It rolls and keeps everything I need in one place. Plus it plain just looks really cool. I paid $300 for it.
- The flat file and drawing desk came together, and I found those off of Craigslist for 50 bucks.
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If you would like to learn more about Calen Knauf, his workspace, or his work, you can find him at the sites listed below;
If you have any questions or comments about this setup, or any other setup featured here at SetupsandSpaces.com, feel free to email me at FValletutti@me.com.
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