Using Stuff

by Matt D. Smith

I use a lot of stuff. This is not an exhaustive list, but contains the most used items from my day to day life.

Work

  • 13” Retina MacBook Pro with 3.1 GHz Intel Core i7 and 16 GB of RAM. My previous machine was a 13” MacBook Air. While I really liked the Air, there’s no way I could go back to a non-retina screen. It makes my big Apple monitor seem crappy. Which leads me to…
  • 27” Apple Cinema Display. I really love this monitor especially when I’m designing a lot of wireframes or UI screens. I do still find myself drifting back to the retina screen of my laptop though because of its crispy goodness.
  • Apple Bluetooth Keyboard and Trackpad. These are my go-to accessories when using the cinema display. I was always hesitant about the smaller keyboard with no num-pad, but ever since they released the version that connects via Thunderbolt, I was sold. Also the trackpad might seem weird at first to design with, but now I’m all in. I used a magic mouse prior to the trackpad and sometimes miss it. I’ve never used a Wacom for design.

Software

  • I use iAwriter to start off any text-based idea. I love the simplicity.
  • I’m a die hard Adobe Illustrator user for UX design. You can’t beat it for logo and icon design either. If you want to see how I use if for big UX projects, check out this email series. It’s hard to get super precise in Illustrator with individual pixels and that makes it great for quick wireframing.
  • I use and love Sketch for all things UI design. I switched to Sketch from Photoshop in 2013 and haven’t looked back. It’s highly geared for pixel precision, which is perfect for interfaces.
  • For UI animation, I use Adobe Animate (formerly Flash). I started out in the web using Flash and that’s my primary reason for sticking with it. After Effects might be a better tool in the long run, but I haven’t felt enough pain with Animate to learn AE better.
  • Lightroom for photography.
  • Sublime Text for coding. Sometimes CodeKit to compile Sass.
  • I’ve used Transmit since the early 2000s as my FTP software of choice. I also used to use Coda before I got better at development.
  • Adobe Premiere Pro for video editing. Speaking of, check out my vlog.
  • Glyphs for type design. Thanks to Mattox, my studio mate for showing me the ropes.
  • Things for tracking to-dos. I don’t have a hard core methodology that I follow, but when I want to get organized I start with Things.
  • If Things isn’t keeping me on track with what I need to plan and do for any given project, I’ll create spreadsheets with Numbers or Google Sheets.
  • I use Safari as my web browser of choice. If I’m doing web development I use Chrome because the inspector is 10x better.
  • Spotify helps keep me focused during work, sometimes.

Ok, I got tired of writing right about here because it's kind of monotonous to write about the things I use day in and day out. I do realize that some of this maybe novel and interesting to others though, so I will continue. Just not right this very moment. Consider this a beta blog post.

My Desk and Stool

I get a lot of questions about my desk whenever I post a picture of my office.

Special visitors in the studio yesterday.

A photo posted by ↯ (@mds) on

Online Services

Yep, I use these.

Camera

I have two different, but very awesome cameras

Personal

I'd like to go beyond the cliched "here's all the stuff I work with" post and go even more personal.

Exercise

I like cycling, running, and strength training. I'll write more about each soon and link to some of my favorite stuff.

Clothes

Links to stuff coming soon.

Style

Hmm, maybe more links. Favorite hair products, etc. I just don't know.

Misc

In case I come across something random that doesn't fit into the other categories. Again links coming soon.

If you're curious about the stuff I left out, leave a comment below to encourage me to keep writing about them.