311 - Sayed Essam

Sayed Essam (Syd) is a product designer focused on creating. Born and raised in Egypt, he knew that design was his passion from an early age.

He is currently a Senior Product Designer at MoneyHash and is also mentoring other designers adplist.org.

Twitter → twitter.com/sydxcix

Inside Syd's Workspace

Desk Items:

• BEKANT Desk (from IKEA)
• BEKANT Side Table on castors
• LG Ultrafine 5K Display (on a VIVO monitor arm)
• Baseus Screen LED Bar
• MacBook Pro M1 Pro 14’ (Main workhorse, attached with one cable ready to go)
• iPad Pro 12.9’ with Apple Pencil (on a flexible stand from Amazon)
• KRK Rokit 5 Studio Monitor Speakers
• Focusrite Scarlet 2i2 Audio Interface (hidden under the monitor stand)
• Scarlet Studio Mic (on a Rode Mic Arm hidden behind the display)
• ELLOVEN Monitor Stand
• Seagate 12TB External Drive
• Woven Desk Mat from Amazon
• Logitech MX Keys Mini
• Logitech MX Master 3 Mouse
• Space Gray Magic Trackpad 2
• MagSafe Charger (with aluminum stand from Amazon)
• Mahogany Teakwood High Intensity Candle from Bath&Body Works
• IKEA Fake Plant
• Macintosh-style Apple Watch Charger Stand
• Cooler Master Ergo L Chair‍

Next to the desk:

• 2 Pegboards from IKEA that I painted black and hanged all my other tech gadgets and photography needs.‍

Above the desk:

• A big shelf to host all my camera and model cars collections along with some posters.‍

Behind the desk:

• Coffee corner that hosts all the tools and needs for making coffee.
• I live in a small apartment so I had to optimize all my work needs into a small accessible space.

Software:

• Figma for everything work related and sometimes more (I made my wedding invitation on Figma!)
• Cron for calendar
• Arc browser lately
• Spotify for music since 2014
• Lightroom for photo editing
• Semplice for portfolio and website
• Final Cut Pro for video editing

What is your favorite item in your workspace?

My Macintosh-style watch charger stand, I’ve searched for a stand for it for 3 years and none looked good or functioned as I wanted it to, till I found this stand which turns the watch into nightstand mode and I can glance at it for the clock and looks like a little retro Macintosh on my desk.‍

What do you think is the main benefit of remote work?

‍I think remote work enabled a lot of people (beside giving back a lot of commute time back to them) to do different stuff beside their work that they wouldn’t normally do. Like ever since Covid and I have started to take care of my desk setup and improve it one by one till I reached this setup, and actually started to make content with (and planning to, so this is a sneak peak).

Check my Instagram for more.