Oak is located at Studiomates, a collaborative workspace of designers, illustrators, bloggers, writers and developers in Brooklyn's DUMBO neighbourhood. As a small company, this bustling environment gives us energy and a unique opportunity to collaborate and learn from others.
Our five-person team shares a 16-foot worktable (1), handcrafted from reclaimed oak (of course). The table was a design collaboration with a local wood shop and features a custom trestle to hide cables and support its massive weight. Sixteen feet was the exact maximum we could fit into our freight elevator, but it's designed to support up to eight people. SAYL chairs by Herman Miller give us the perfect mix of style and comfort.
Keeping us on track every day is our custom status board (2) known as ACORN, or 'Aggregated Console Of Recent News'. ACORN pulls in our GitHub projects, sales goals, support tickets, calendar, weather and tweets. Ping us at @oakstudios and you'll show up here. Sales from our products trigger a celebration of animated GIFs and sound effects in real-time. The Node.js app was written over a few weeks during a company retreat, and is displayed on two 60in LED displays.
We all use Apple Thunderbolt Displays paired with MacBook Pro Retinas or MacBook Airs to give us mobility. Occasionally, this means heading to a local bar with Wi-Fi for an afternoon work session. Stickers for our products Symbolset and Siteleaf (3) can be found just about everywhere. Hovering above our developer Larry Fox is our drone overlord (4) (a Parrot AR. Drone 2.0), and keeping the UPS guy in check is our guard dog Pinky (5) (a French Bulldog).
Our chalkboard wall (6) serves as a living canvas, featuring a rotating collection of chalk art from studio visitors. At the back we have some custom-built bike racks (7) from Etsy, keeping our floorspace open when clients drop by.
Words: Skylar Challand
Skylar Challand is the founder of Oak Studios, a design and development studio located in Brooklyn, NY. This article originally appeared in net magazine issue 251.
