Colourful Home Office Full of Art and Comics in New Jersey

Name: Jason D

Location: Northeast New Jersey

Occupation: User Interface Designer

Room size: 12,3 m² (132 ft²)

Hello! Tell us a bit about yourself

Hi! I’m Jason — a graphic designer turned user interface designer, turned chief product officer, turned user interface designer (again).

After 20 years commuting to New York City, I now work full-time from home, building a startup I co-founded. And it’s great.

I also collect... a lot.

In my office, you’ll find no shortage of original art, art prints, and comic books.

When the pandemic hit and our shared office space in NYC closed for good, I took the opportunity to design my home office as both a functional workspace and a gallery of sorts.

These are the things that inspire my creativity, so it only made sense to surround myself with them.

I share this house with my amazing girlfriend — and until just last week, our dog Tobias, who sadly passed away suddenly.

I’m still adjusting to not seeing him asleep in the big leather chair behind my desk.

Take us through your setup

I had so much art I wanted to display, but the idea of constantly hanging and rehanging frames sounded like a nightmare.

So I came up with a better solution — a custom wainscoting that doubles as a shelf, letting me reshuffle my decor whenever the mood strikes.

I sketched the design in Illustrator and enlisted my best friend’s contractor brother to bring it to life.

The result was even better than I imagined!

The light, neutral walls let the colours in my prints and comics really pop and take centre stage.

I use the 60×30 inch sit/stand Sway walnut desk by Ergonofis.

I wanted my desk to be as wide and deep as the room could comfortably handle.

But with off-centre windows on both walls, finding balance was tricky.

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Centring the desk on the wall did the trick.

From there, I used art to visually balance the space — placing larger prints on the wider sides of the room to create symmetry.

I also prefer to stand at my desk for the first hour or two of each morning and thus everything that could be mounted, is mounted under my desk.

That includes my Apple Mac Studio computer, all hard drives, outlets, backups… all of it.

This setup makes it easy to raise and lower the desk without worrying about wires pulling or dangling behind.

From a practical standpoint, my office gets a ton of natural light. And natural light is the enemy of anything printed with ink.

So I did everything I could to make the space UV-resistant.

When the windows needed to be replaced, I opted for UV-resistant glass.

I also added a UV-resistant adhesive to the inside of the windows.

Then I installed diffuser shades that stay down almost permanently.

All of these precautions allow for my room to feel super bright with sunlight, but without the sun-fading damage of UV rays.

For the comics, I took a cue from the frame ledge and installed some closet organisers to double as shelves.

I used a few washers and bolts to keep them at a consistent display angle — nice and cheap, but super effective!

To balance out the space, I repurposed a comfy leather chair that had been hanging out in the basement for a few years.

It’s nice sometimes to just sit back and look at the comics/art as a display while not sitting in my desk chair.

Different perspectives are important.

The chair also doubled as a dog lounge and leaves me with so many memories that it won’t be moved anytime soon.

What’s your favourite item on your desk?

I spend countless hours at my desk every day, so I finally decided that everything in my workspace should bring me joy.

The computer got tucked away — and in came the statues.

I also listen to a lot of music while I work, which is why upgrading my speakers was a must.

That upgrade quickly became my favourite gear purchase.

They cost about $400 with the stands, but they’ve been absolutely worth it.

I’ve been blasting music through them six to eight hours a day for nearly four years now.

Break that down, and it’s something like 20 cents a day — so yeah, totally worth it!

What apps or tools do you use to get things done?

I get things done with all things Adobe Creative Cloud.

On a typical day, I’m constantly jumping between Adobe Illustrator, Adobe XD, and Figma.

I’m also no stranger to Google Docs, and I’ll occasionally use Keynote for presentations.

But at the core, I’m always prototyping something.

After nearly 30 years in the field, navigating Adobe CC feels like second nature and moving through menus and keyboard shortcuts is all muscle memory.

Any tips for other makers who want to improve their workspaces?

Getting started on improvements is often the hardest part, but once I begin, it’s surprisingly easy to keep going.

When I first sketched out my idea, I envisioned a modest setup: 10 to 12 prints and a single rack of comics.

But it didn’t take long before I fully maximised the space and curated a much larger display.

Now, I can’t imagine going back to those plain yellow walls with just a few frames hanging.

What does your typical day look like?

My typical day starts at my desk by 8 am.

I’m an early bird, and I’ve found that my most creative hours are between eight and noon.

I save the busywork for after lunch and stay focused by avoiding distractions like email, Slack, or Twist during that time.

Around 10 am, I’d usually take a 20-minute break to walk my dog.

In the spring and summer, that break often stretches to 30 minutes or more. 😉

What began as a temporary “let’s work from home for a few days” during the early days of the pandemic has turned into a permanent shift.

I honestly can’t imagine commuting to the city again.

While I do miss seeing my coworkers in person, many have since relocated as we’ve accepted remote work.

We still Zoom daily, and one coworker even comes by once a week to work from my home office for a few hours.

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Your tips for working from home?

Working from home has been a dream.

I’m happier, and my dog was especially happier.

Balancing my start and end times has always been a challenge, but the lack of traffic and weather delays makes things easier.

I’ve found that my workday now winds down gradually rather than ending with a hard cut-off which actually works well for me.

Taking intermittent dog walks helped break up the day and gave me a much-needed reason to step away from the desk.

One great tip for designing your workspace — invest in items that genuinely suit your routine and not someone else’s.

For me, it’s the small things that make the biggest difference.

Wireless devices are great, but they all need to be charged regularly.

To avoid clutter, I made it super easy to charge everything without wires piling up again.

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For example, my mouse charges on a dock plugged into an outlet under the desk so it doesn’t rely on my monitor’s USB ports (which power down when the monitor sleeps).

It’s much easier to drop the mouse onto its dock than to dig out Logitech’s oddly specific charging cable.

Same goes for my keyboard — I have a USB-C cable tucked just out of sight under the desk that I pull out at the end of the week and stash away again when I’m done.

Whether it’s light bars, chargers, desk size or even window shades, these things should be tailored to your space and your workflow.

Think about what actually works for you.

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