Working as a designer in Beirut, Sana Asseh could mock up a website’s interface, but she couldn’t build it herself. Today, living in a California forest, she does both with ChatGPT Work.
Sana ran a brand identity studio in Beirut for twenty years. Her husband, William “Mac” McClenahan, created Saifi Urban Gardens, a hotel and gathering place in Beirut, by renovating old buildings. But Beirut’s 2020 port blast left those buildings in ruins. After losing their home and business, the family of four moved to Kings Mountain, California, south of San Francisco. While waiting for her paperwork, Sana paused her graphic design work for a year. Working with her hands around the house and land made her want a different kind of business. As her family cleared the property to reduce fire risk, they saw room for a campsite. Mac built it, while Sana designed an experience to shape what guests would find and how they would feel.
Sana grew up in France, and her new California neighbors teased her about being “fancy”: the accent, the skirts she wore in the woods. One night, the running joke became a name for their business: Fancy Camp . They wanted French flair, American comfort and Lebanese hospitality. Guests could arrive with as little as a backpack, then settle into equipped glamping tents spaced far apart in the forest. Sana began designing the camp’s identity with tools she had used in Beirut. Then a visiting friend showed her ChatGPT. As an art director, she had always depended on others to realize her vision. Now she could develop those visuals through conversations with ChatGPT, trying again and again without worrying about how to avoid hurt feelings and the extra cost.
“I realized that I can actually create so much of everything I’ve been wanting to create,” she says.
She made quirky animals inspired by the goats and chickens on the property, adding eyes that drew on the Middle Eastern tradition of protection against the evil eye. With no client to please, she could follow an idea as far as she wanted. She turned those creatures into patches and stickers, creating a whole line of merchandise. Guests met the real animals on the mountain, then bought their likenesses at the farm stand as souvenirs.
The camp near Skyline Boulevard has ocean views and often sits above the clouds. It does bookings through Airbnb and Hipcamp, but it needed its own website. ChatGPT helped Sana choose a template and booking tools, then program and customize the site. She learned as she built, sometimes working all through the night on a new kind of high. She went on to make two more client websites herself. “It’s teaching me stuff,” she says.
Selling eggs from their “Coop D'Etat Farm” at local shops helped the family meet their neighbors and introduce people to the camp. Sana now serves on the board of the Kings Mountain Association, a volunteer community group, and brings her perspectives from France and Beirut. She also designed and programmed the association’s website. But the most important thing, she says, is “sharing a part of our forest with the guests.”
