276 - Lilit Balagyozyan

Inside Lilit's Workspace

Lilit Balagyozyan is a Product Designer at Kickstarter, working on the payments team.

Twitter → twitter.com/lilitbala
Behance → behance.net/lilitbala
LinkedIn → linkedin.com/in/lilitb

Items:

• M1 MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2021) 32GB RAM, 1TB — Personal laptop. I went all out on this machine with the intention to practice 3D modeling/rendering with Blender later this year.
• MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019) 1TB — Work laptop
• Apple Magic trackpad — I have one for each laptop
• Apple Magic keyboard — I have one for each laptop. For my work keyboard I designed DIY stickers to label my Zoom hotkeys. If anyone is interested, you can download them here.
• Apple AirPods Pros — My preferred headphones. I just wish the battery life was longer.
• Apple Lighting Dock — To charge my Apple AirPods Pros and iPhone
• BoseNoise Cancelling Headphones — I used to share an office with my partner so we both wore these to prevent our microphones from picking up each other’s voices during overlapping meetings. Fantastic battery life.
• Dell UltraSharp 27 4K USB-C Monitor - U2720Q — Work monitor
• Philips 4K Ultra HD LCD monitor — Personal monitor. I love it, but no VESA mount means I needed to buy an arm mount to hold it up.
• Logitech HD Pro Webcam
• Butcher Block tabletop from Homedepot — which we stained lightly
• Fully Jarvis White Monitor Arms (2x) — These are so utterly beautiful. They have a dual monitor arm, but I bought 2 separate ones so I have the freedom to modify my set up in the future.
• Fully Jarvis White Frame/Legs — The legs on these are set back rather than centered, which I really like the look of. It works like a charm.
• IKEA HELMER Drawer Unit
• BenchPro Chair 21”-31” Height Adjustment — These were the chairs we used in our design studio and I immediately hunted them down upon graduating from my design program. I intentionally looked for a chair that was made for counter to bar height, which I prefer for focused work. This also means I almost always have my desk between bar and standing height.
• Rubber Office Chair Casters — I love these. They are very gentle on the floor and make no sound. My only issue with them is that I set my chair to bar stool height so feet are dangling, and so I need to anchor myself in place with my elbows otherwise I occasionally roll away
• ‍Analog retro clock — I find analog clocks help me visualize (and thus, manage) time better. I always keep one within eye view of my work stations.‍
• Target Marble Coasters — I’m terrified of coffee staining my beautiful butcher block table‍
• Upright laptop stand — High on my requirements list was finding a stand without a logo stamped somewhere on the front, somehow a surprisingly rare feature. ‍
• Twelve South Staygo USBC hub — Love this thing
  

Tools:

• Figma — For product design work and collaboration. It’s also where I make my habit tracker each week, build brand elements, prepare to print stickers, etc.
• Adobe Creative Cloud — I use a good mix of Illustrator, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Indesign for high fidelity graphic design work.
• Adobe fonts — Essential for exploring logos and branding and works together with Webflow
• Webflow — for my portfolio, and for building websites in general
• Coda — For documenting & organizing my life and projects
• Pintrest — For mood-boarding and inspiration. It’s the best visual search engine in the world, I’m constantly amazed by it.
• Behance and Dribblble — For visual design inspiration
• Miro — For flowcharts and diagrams
• Google Chrome — Inspect and extensions are a must have, though the interface could be more minimal.
• Slack — For collaboration and communication
• Twitter — For design community and design news
• Apple Mail — For an aggregation of all my emails. I find the interface much smoother than gmail.
• Concepts App (on iPad) — For sketching ideas when erasing and copy/pasting is preferred. Otherwise I use a roll of butter paper to sketch on
• Unsplash — For stock images
• Freepik — For vectors/illustrations
• Noun Project — For icons

What is your favorite item in your workspace?

My favorite item in my workspace is my little clock. It helps me visualize my day when I planning.

How do you spark creativity?

I explore Pinterest daily for inspiration and when I have a spark of creativity, I usually start by moving over to the studio desks and rolling out some butcher paper to scribble my chaotic ideas down on. I find butcher paper to be a low pressure medium to let go on. I take a photo of the good ideas to move over to other tools to bring it to higher fidelity.

How do you keep the work-life balance?

I’m lucky to work at a company that fiercely protects work-life balance and we are piloting a 4-day-work-week starting in April. But as a general practice, to protect my work-life balance by I planing religiously. I block out time to focus, as well as time to step away and relax;  exercise, meditate, read, draw, etc.