Q&A with Jimmy Walker

I’m Jimmy Walker. I’m a Partner and Creative Director at Bad Assembly, a digital advertising agency in Los Angeles. I also maintain a few small side projects in my free time, one of them being a collection of art and photography called Darkshapes and the other being an ongoing catalog of art and design inspiration called Quadraforce. What free time I have left is usually dedicated to photography, gaming, reading, and watching the Lakers and Arsenal.

Hardware

My set up at the Bad Assembly office is a 15” Retina MacBook Pro hooked into a Cinema Display. In my home office I’ve got a 27” iMac. Occasionally I’ll use my iPad to sketch out interfaces or wireframes. On the photography side I recently picked up a Fuji x100s that I’ve been taking with me everywhere. However, I’d have to say that my most used piece of hardware is probably my iPhone 5s. Whether I’m browsing the web, reading emails, or shooting pictures, I’m always on that thing.

Software

Adobe dominates my workflow and has done so for about as long as I can remember. Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects are where I spend 80% of my time. Bad Assembly still produces ad units so I also find myself in Flash every now and then as well.

Outside of Adobe, I spend a lot of time in Evernote, Spotify, Chrome, Coda 2, Transit, and Cinema 4D.

Dream setup

I really dig my set up at the Bad Assembly office. We’ve always got good music playing and I have a view of downtown and Pershing Square park. I suppose that if we could get an in-house barista to make gourmet coffee around the clock that would be pretty great.

Inspiration

If I focus too much on looking for inspiration chances are it won’t come. Reading books and gaming are both escapes that allow me to sort of shut down and reenergize my brain. I also feel it is important to be exposed to stimuli from outside of my specific field. Activities like watching films, listening to music, and hanging out with friends are examples of places where inspiration can hide.