Q&A with Courtney Eliseo

My name is Courtney Eliseo and I run a small design studio called Seamless Creative with my husband, Brian. We operate out of Fairfield County, Connecticut and focus mainly on brand identity work for small businesses. I also run designworklife.com, a blog that features design-centric inspiration on a daily basis.

Hardware

I switch between two computers, a 2012 15" Macbook Pro Retina (which I now have set up at a standing desk) and a brand new iMac. I have one additional monitor at the station with the laptop and work with an ergonomic Logitech mouse at each one. Since I work out of a home office, my laptop allows me to move around and work from outside the house if I'd like, but the iMac is great for when I need to buckle down and work for a large chunk of time. I'm also fiercely loyal to Behance Dot Grid notebooks for sketching and Pilot Razor Point II pens.

Software

The Adobe programs are definitely staples—for my design work, I spend most of my time in Illustrator and InDesign and for DWL, I spend more time in Photoshop. To keep myself (and the businesses) organized I use Mailplane for keeping track of multiple email accounts, Omnifocus for to dos, Harvest for time tracking and invoicing, Dropbox for file storage, 1Password for password management, Google Docs for spreadsheets and other documents, Podio for account management and lead tracking and Evernote for writing and note taking. I also use Coda here and there for site updates. And for fun, I use Spotify for music streaming, iTunes for podcast listening and Twitter for keeping up with social media.

Dream setup

We just moved into our house about six months ago, so I'm slowly working on making my office into a dream set-up. But, for me, a true dream set-up would probably be located in Hawaii, my favorite place on earth.

Inspiration

Running Design Work Life exposes me to an endless amount of creative work, so there is no shortage of inspiration there. But beyond the work itself, I'm truly inspired by the designers I see every day who are constantly pushing themselves to do great work, creating their own projects, starting businesses and taking complete control over their careers.