“The life of a designer is a life of fight: fight against the ugliness.”— Massimo Vignelli

For the past couple of weeks I have been working to get myself “organized.”  Trying to adapt to my revised job responsibilities has me completely at sixes and sevens.  A webinar by David Allen reminded me of my past, those times when I was on top of every little detail.  I used his process outlined in the book Getting Things Done. Realizing I had lost my process and my good habits, I dusted off my copy of the book and have been slowly working to get back on track.  While my issue is really about process and not so much organizing my space – I did that sometime back and have been able to maintain it – I realized that one problem with my office was that my desk has no file drawers.  I have resisted putting a file cabinet in there.  I really like the way my office looks and didn’t want to introduce a metal eyesore to one of my favorite rooms.  But the need for function has driven me to reconsider. One of my dealer friends offered me a great deal on exactly what I needed – FREE.  I like free, but this thing was in my least favorite color – putty.  Black would be better, even grey, but putty – yuck!  Ultimately function and free triumphed over ugly putty and it came home with me.

Sharpie oil-based paint markers and Zentangle were the tools I used to banish the ugly from this plain, putty file cabinet.  I may add a little more pizzazz to it later, but I’m calling it done for now.  Now I just need to get the thing loaded up with my files.

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