My family has a new home. A new house, in fact. People ask us all the time, “How do you describe the style?” I never know the answer. “Mid-century? Modern?”

It’s simply “our own.” We designed it for us. And as a graphic designer myself, the new house was my most rewarding design project to date.

The mid-century-architect Le Corbusier once said, “To create architecture is to put in order.” That’s basically what I told my Aunt Peggy, too, after showing her a magazine I had designed.

“Oh, that’s great, honeyyyy,” she said in her Fran Drescher-esque voice. “So, did you write it? Take the photographs? Draw these pictures?”

“Well, no,” I responded, quite familiar with the question. “To design is to put all of these elements in order.”

I’ve been a graphic designer for 10 years. A majority of those years I’ve been the design director at Journey Group. I’m creative, like the rest of my colleagues, but it’s a penchant for organization that has served me best in my career — and in many other endeavors, come to think of it, including home-building.

Unable to find an existing home that suited our aesthetic, my wife, Lisa, and I possessed a naive confidence that we could tackle this grand design project. I’m far from an architect, but I do have Adobe InDesign. I don’t own any power tools, but I am resourceful.

It was my resourcefulness that led to lunch with the owner of Latitude 38, a local design/build company. I had stumbled across the company’s first house project online and thought its layout and materials were stunning. Lisa and I were confident that Latitude 38 had what it took to make our dream home a reality.

We quickly found a city lot, and it was obvious why this 30-foot-wide wisp of land had been on the market for more than a year: It hardly looked build-able. We were equally skeptical, but Latitude 38’s owner, Jeff, showed us an elevation that fit the lot like a glove. We decided to embrace the design constraints as an advantage. Using Jeff’s exterior dimensions, Lisa and I arranged the interior elements.

While pushing around rectangles in InDesign, I quickly realized that the same principals I employed to design a magazine spread were an asset for creating architecture. We used the “principal of thirds” to divide the house into three sections whenever we tackled a new aspect of the project.

For example, to organize the interior space, we placed all essentials (stairs, bathrooms, plumbing and closets) into one-third. This compartmentalization not only maximized efficiency, but it left the other two-thirds of each floor as unfettered living space. To reflect the interior and to add dimension, we even pulled one-third of the front facade toward the street.

With the form established and the elements arranged, this is when the fun begins in both graphic design and in architecture. This is where we find ways to create distinction. Lisa remembered a spread in our archive of Dwell magazines that displayed an enormous circular entryway. The family had converted an old Chinese restaurant in San Francisco into their home, keeping this one distinct feature.

I loved the idea. Not only would it divide the kitchen from the living space but it would also counterbalance the house’s many right angles. Jeff loved it, too, and now it’s our house’s signature and conversation piece.

One year later, I am still amazed at how simple vector drawings on my laptop became the place we now call our own. Putting things in order and doing so with beauty — it’s what I try to do in every area of my life.