Designer’s Smart Desk Setup in Bulgaria

Name: Vasil Enev

Location: Plovdiv, Bulgaria (Lesser-known fact: It’s actually the oldest continuously inhabited city in Europe, with its history stretching all the way back to around 6000 BCE)

Occupation: Multidisciplinary Designer

Room size: 10,35 m² (110 ft²)

Cost of setup: ~$5K for the desk, PC, and monitor + ~$8K for completing the room from scratch, including the ceiling construction and lighting, flooring, paint, cable installations, furniture, and accessories.

Social media: Instagram

Website: Linktree

Hello! Tell us a bit about yourself

Hey readers and creatives.

I’m Vasil Enev, and firstly I want to say thank you to Trish from Maker Stations for the great opportunity to share my journey and setup progress.

I hope to inspire anyone looking to build or upgrade their stations.

My current occupation is as a Senior Product Designer, and I’m working with an amazing team!

I’m entirely self-taught and have been designing for 10+ years.

On the side, I recently started publishing tutorials, tips, and design inspiration content on my social media accounts.

As a kid, I was always amazed by technology.

Thankfully my aunt, who was a maths and IT teacher, had one of the first computers of that time.

I remember the big chunky monitor looking like carry-on luggage that constantly stole my attention.

I enjoyed it so much that it was hard to get off that monitor — especially when there were games on it.

Hand in hand with that, I was naturally skilled in drawing, and I always had the itch to experiment and create — I was the guy that everyone in painting class came to for help with their artworks, hah.

This was right when technology started advancing at unbelievable speed, and I remember getting a pirated version of Adobe Photoshop CS2 from a friend.

I already had my first PC, and that’s when it all started.

For a few years, I casually learned it at home after school and created fan-based content for video games, forums, and friends.

One day, I found this contest website called 99Designs, and I wanted to test my skills and probably earn my first money. That’s when my design journey actually kicked off — I was 16 years old at that time.

I started competing on the platform and got my first win for a logo design.

I can’t forget the joy and feeling of it, so I continued.

I won 34 more contests, and clients repeatedly came back. Let’s call these my freelance years.

I built my portfolio, and I was contacted to join a full-time job at a company at 21.

I had my doubts, but I let my instincts guide me, and here I am, many years later, still doing what I love.

Take us through your setup

In 2022, I had the opportunity to get my own apartment.

It was one of the achievements in life that I wanted to check off, so I started looking for apartments in my area.

A close friend suggested I take a look at a new building they were just finalising construction on.