Inspirations

For this project, my inspiration came from the modern industrial aesthetic. I wanted to create a drawer that would fit seamlessly into the desk I had previously designed and built. The desk had clean lines, raw materials like wood and steel, and an overall minimalist vibe. I wanted the drawer to reflect these same design principles.

I drew inspiration from a variety of sources, including other modern industrial furniture pieces, architecture, and even nature. I wanted to incorporate materials that would complement the desk, such as reclaimed wood. I also wanted the drawer to have a simple, functional design that would blend in with the overall look and feel of the desk and match the existing geometry of the desk.

Vision

The vision for this project was to create a functional, yet visually appealing, drawer that would help me clean up my desk area. My desk design includes a riser that elevates my monitor and my studio monitors to eye and ear height. Initially I envisioned that the area below the riser would be taken up primarily by recording equipment, but there is a significant amount of excess space and that space inevitably got overtaken by random junk as you can see below.

The most important specification that I set for this project is that the drawer matches the aesthetic of the existing desk which in this case was modern industrial. Some other constraints that I included were that the drawer must occupy the space well,  slide smoothly, be completely removable, and have a handle. I envisioned a very clean, minimal, nice looking wooden drawer with a powder coated steel handle.

Design

Here you can see my initial sketches for the drawer.

Once I had a decent understanding of the general form for the drawer I moved into Fusion 360 where I created a 3D model of the drawer and finalized all of my dimensions.

My design communicates my desired aesthetic of modern industrial primarily via its simple geometry and the choice of materials. Clean lines were a must so I made sure not to do anything too flashy, and a piece of reclaimed wood that I sourced at a local woodshop served as the perfect drawer front. Once I find one that I really like, I will go ahead and order a black steel drawer pull. Here you can see how these materials came together in real life.

I believe that the design process is the most effective form of problem solving and I think that the side-by-side of the before and after of my desktop certainly backs up that statement. As you can see here it went from a cluttered mess to a clean coherent piece of homemade furniture.