275 - Jonatan Castro

Jonatan Castro is a Product Designer at TIDAL.

He has been designing since 2009, mostly working as a freelancer for big names like Opera and Vodafone, but also helping out startups. He's also been working on some personal projects with a friend. You can actually see some of those projects on his old portfolio from 2016 here.

Twitter → twitter.com/jonatan
Dribbble → dribbble.com/jcastro

Inside Jonatan's Workspace

Current Setup:

• Apple Studio Display
• Macbook Pro 14 M1 Pro
• Apple Magic Keyboard
• iPhone 13 Pro
• Airpods 3rd generation
• Logitech G502 Lightspeed
• Fully Jarvis Standing desk

Usual Tools:

• Figma
• Raycast
• Chrome
• Slack
• droplr
• Notion
• nextcloud
• Home Assistant
• Shottr
• Stats
• Bartender
• Fusion360
• Blender
• Bambu lab X1 Carbon 3D printer

What is your favorite item in your workspace?

Hands down, my 3D printer is the best tool in my arsenal. It's completely transformed the way I approach design. Being able to model something on the computer and then hold it in your hand is mind-blowing. Plus, it's incredibly useful for fixing broken things or coming up with innovative solutions by designing and printing new parts. It's like having a glimpse into the future.

How do you spark creativity?

I typically find inspiration by browsing through the works of other artists in various fields. I particularly find architecture and interior design to be incredibly inspiring.

How do you manage work-life balance?

It's always been pretty effortless for me to maintain a work-life balance. I've been working from home for my entire career, so I have a dedicated room in my apartment for work. If I'm not in that room, then I'm not working.

Anything else?

I'm a total tech and hardware geek, and I love everything related to servers and technology. As a matter of fact, I have my own server running Proxmox that hosts multiple virtual machines and services. These include:

-Daily local backups of my computers
-Daily cloud backups of the server
-Nextcloud server (a Dropbox alternative)
-TrueNAS (secure storage)
-Bitwarden server (password manager)
-PiHole (DNS and ads blocker)
-Home Assistant running in high availability mode, 24/7

On top of that, I'm a huge fan of home automation and enjoy building my own sensors. My office is fully integrated into my home automation system, so the lights turn on and off automatically based on the ambient light and a presence sensor that uses mmWave technology. What's really cool about this sensor is that it can detect your heartbeat, so the lights won't turn off if you're standing still. Additionally, the blinds automatically adjust to regulate temperature and ambient light, or to set the mood.