Every time I pick up the proverbial hatchet and start hacking away at design and CSS I discover a heap of trouble. It’s never as simple as “redesigning” my site. Inevitably some tiny existential crisis emerges from the code-struggle. If I move it 10 pixels left will it better reflect my “balanced” personality? I mean, come ooon, I think to myself. You are so much bigger than a pixel! You can do this!

This morning I emerge from the code heap and give you the new design of gwenbell.com: Welcome to it!

Paul, my friend and design partner, visited Boulder (from Berlin) in April and we discussed the redesign of this site, as well as the reconfiguration of our design firm. Here’s Paul, in his own words, on the redesign gwenbell.com.

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A Note from the Designer, Paul Salamone

Last winter, Gwen and I sat down in a café in Boulder so I could teach her Adobe Illustrator. This was many months before we started our design firm together, and we were just figuring out what it would be like to work together. For some reason, I thought I could teach her Adobe’s most difficult program — one I’ve spent over 10 years mastering — in just a few hours, thus empowering her to design her own site.

The problem was, we were in café. Gwen doesn’t sit still in cafés, or in any public space for that matter. As soon as I got into some of the more minor technical details of using the pen tool, Gwen was up talking to the baristas, chatting with potential clients, and handing out business cards, and I was alone with the voice recorder.

It’s in those moments that I do my my best work, and this moment was no different. As she gabbed and networked and drummed up future business for us, I came up with the “gwen bell” logotype you’ve seen on this site for the past year and a half. It’s based (as per her suggestion) on the typographic logo for Roppongi Hills in Japan, which in my estimation is brilliant (theirs, not mine).

Since then, our collaborations have proceeded like this:

Gwen: “I need a new banner. Something chibi. With colors.”

Me, after a few days of prodding: “How about this? (See attached)”

Gwen, two hours later: “Nice! But can you tone down the ____, make the _____, and come up with a new _____.”

Me, after a few more days of prodding, along with a trans-continental text message: “Here, see attached again. And now I have to run to Lidl for liter of Schnitzelsaft and a pint of Spargeleis.”

Gwen, three hours later: “I love this new banner! You’re a genius! PS: What is Spargeleis?”

Me, drinking celebration beer, along with Schnitzelsaft: “Thanks. That will be 12,500 euros please. PS: Spargeleis is asparagus-flavored ice cream. It tastes even worse than you would think it does.”

(Ok, that last bit was a lie — I would never charge Gwen a dime for these services, because she does the accounting and some other stuff for our design firm and it would be too complicated for her to invoice herself.)

This latest design round was no different. She kicked things off by sending me a photograph of a collection of Tazo teas, and told me to (again) “make it chibi”. She then suggested I use images relevant to several of her favorite cities. In the background, you can see (from left to right) Yokohama’s ferris wheel, Boulder’s Flatiron mountains, the gazebo at the University of North Carolina, and Berlin’s own Fernsehturm TV tower (Gwen lived in Germany but avoided Berlin, so that will be a guilty reminder each time she logs on).

The girl and her koala bear were originally designed for Expatriette.com, but I think it works as a graphic stand-in for Gwen as well. On a hill behind them, that’s “Gwen” again doing yoga, based on a photo of her from Japan. In the upper-right, a hedgehog is parachuting in for emergency cuteness. The tagline was just some spur-of-the-moment thing, but I think it fits. And finally, the black Macbook and the coffee cup: Gwen Bell staples. The whole thing is surrounded by the trail of an airplane, which connotes a key dynamic in Ms. Bell’s life: cosmopolitanism.

All in all, Gwen’s been an interesting client to work for. Her instructions are never quite specific enough to constrain me, but over the past two years of knowing her, I know what she likes, sometimes even more than she does. I think it’s this sort of long-term intimacy with a client’s needs that allows we “creative class” types to do our best work.

As long as they pay in Spargeleis.