This post was inspired a little bit by Brian Warren’s monthly mix tape and a lot by the Design Work Flows panel I attended last year at SXSW… music seems to go hand and hand with design. While many designers regularly listen to music while concepting or photoshop comping, I am the type who prefers to listen to my headphones when I am coding some CSS. What intrigues me the most is WHAT people listen to, and when.

So the other day as I was working I decided to jot down what I listened to on my ipod and make a mixed tape. Now… my taste in music is all over the place. Don’t judge me. Ok fine… judge me. If this is your first time to my site, please keep in mind my taste in music in no way reflects my taste in design. Enjoy!

What do you guys listen to and when? What are your essential tracks?

Venus In Furs- Devotchka
I am really digging this band right now, check them out on the “Little Miss Sunshine” soundtrack as well. I like to start my day with them.

Gossip Folks- Missy Elliott (Featuring my boy Luda)
Because we are from the VA-Represent.

Heaven is a Place On Earth- Belinda Carlisle
One of the first Videos I remember seeing on MTV

Green Onions- Booker T. & The MG’s
This song is the epitome of cool. This song is the Bad-Ass Anthem

Ain’t Nothing Wrong With That- Robert Randolph and the Family Band
Because my boy can get down on the slide guitar.

Janis Joplin- Combination of the Two
There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think… “Janis Joplin, now that is a Bitch’n Bad-Ass”. This is a great early tune.

Betterman-John Butler Trio
Because John Butler is pretty freaking hot.

Bears- Lyle Lovett
…but Lyle Lovett is hotter. You think I am joking? See this guy live with his Large Band and try and disagree. Best live show hands down.

Time Bomb- Rancid
Brings back the good ole days.

Steppin’ Out with My Baby- Tony Bennett
For an old dude this guy can still get down. Also a fantastic live performer.

Say it Ain’t So- Weezer
Was the official band of the store back when I used to work at Capitol Mac in Richmond. Back before there were Apple Stores.

Most designers I casually survey agree that one of their most daunting challenges is creating a design for their personal identity and website. Often we will end up settling for something thats OK but not perfect just to get our work out there. A lot of times a designer is too busy with paying clients to focus on personal expression. Devising your own site is a challenge for any creative professional. It consists of coming up with a visual representation who you think you are, who others view you to be, and how you want to be marketed to future clients. This can make you go completely banana-shits insane.

Since my senior year in college I have been dealing with this struggle annually… coming up with a new web design, being unsatisfied and then spending all my time trying to think up something better. I have done over 30 different comps in the last year alone, and I finally feel like I have put together a site that provides a clear peak into my inner design soul.

This is the official Website of Samantha Warren Version 5.0.

This new launch helps me breath a sigh of relief. I can go back to spending my spare time blogging instead of tweaking CSS. It also marks a fantastic time of change in my life.

This post will be followed by several posts that I have just been itching to write. I can’t wait to tell you a little bit about how I came to finally decide on this design, what has been eating away at my brain about the London Olympics Logo, and Apple’s iTunes U.

Technorati Tags: website redesign, typography, Design that can kick Chuck Norris’ Butt

Design is everywhere. Since i was in the 6th grade, any time anyone asked me what i wanted to do when i grow up the answer has been ” i want to be a graphic designer”. A few years before that if you would have asked me the same question the answer would have been the “President of the United States… who is also a graphic designer”. Growing up i was raised by two very unique people, my mother a graduate of the art institute who had worked as a fashion illustrator and visual merchandiser, and my father who owned his own copy shop which evolved into a “graphics shop” with the advent of the Mac on the VCU campus. It made perfect sense to me then that the leader of the free world would need to know a thing or two about branding. And while at the time i probably naively thought that in a more direct way, i now tend to agree that the president of the United States should know a bit more about Branding.

When people ask me, “what would you do if you weren’t a designer?”, i honestly don’t have an answer for them. As cliche as it sounds, i pretty much grew up to be a designer and have never considered pursuing anything otherwise. And this brings me to why i have decided to begin writing this blog. I am always passionately thinking about design. I am truly a design nerd, the type that goes home on a friday night to comp up a site for a friend and rides the metro pointing out all the typefaces along the way. We are at the brink of a fantastic new age in society, one where design is seamlessly being integrated throughout our lives. Often times it is overlooked, subconsciously forcing us in a new direction on the sidewalk or convincing us to buy the unique teapot at Target. This is overwhelmingly exciting for me. I am constantly being stimulated from all directions, noticing delicious gems of simple design wonder everywhere. I am writing this blog to point these out.

Starting slowly but surely i welcome discussion regarding all forms of design in a constructively critical forum. Please feel free to share your experiences, design related or not on any subject matter presented here. If you have an idea of any areas of focus i should dive into, please suggest! Also, a little note… i am a bit of a typophile. I will be pointing out my type mood for every entry i make. Having a favorite typeface is just too much of a commitment for me, they change as often as my mood.

[techtags: Samantha Warren, Graphic Designer, Web Designer, Washington DC web designer, design nerd, web geek]