Tools
Tools
The tools I reach for day to day, across design, development, and music. Not exhaustive, just the ones that have earned their place.
01
Design
- Figma
- Primary tool for everything from early wireframes to handoff. The multiplayer aspect makes it the easiest way to stay in sync with engineers and stakeholders without a meeting.
- Stark
- Accessibility checking inside Figma. Contrast, touch targets, and vision simulation without leaving the file.
- Blender
- 3D illustration as a side practice. Slower and more meditative than screen design, which is probably why I keep coming back to it.
02
Development
- Xcode
- iOS development for Luma. Steep but unavoidable, and genuinely good once you're past the initial friction.
- Swift
- The language. Opinionated in ways that make you write better code whether you want to or not.
- Astro
- What this site is built with. The islands architecture keeps things fast without giving up the occasional bit of React when it's actually needed.
- VS Code
- General editing, anything outside Xcode.
- Netlify
- Hosting and deployment for this site and Luma's PWA prototype. Push to deploy and forget about it.
03
Hardware
- MacBook Air M4
- Design, Xcode, and light Ableton use. Handles everything I throw at it without a fan.
- iPhone
- Primary test device. The only way to know if something actually works is to use it with your thumb in the real world.
- Audient iD14
- Audio interface for recording and monitoring. Transparent and reliable, does nothing interesting, which is the point.
- Arturia MiniLab MK3
- MIDI controller for production and as a secondary input device for Luma testing.
04
Audio & Music
- Ableton Live
- Production and live performance as Electric Phantoms. Session View for stems-based live sets, Arrangement for recording.
- Minichord
- One of the instruments that partly inspired Luma. Chord-based, playable without music theory, and weirdly expressive.
- OP-XY
- Compact synthesiser and sequencer that punches well above its size. Ends up in sketches more than I expect it to.
- Guitars
- Acoustic and electric. For when the screen needs to be somewhere else for a while.
05
This site
Built with Astro v6, hosted on Netlify, written in VS Code. A little React where it earns its place, otherwise just HTML and CSS. Deployed on push. No CMS, content lives in markdown files alongside the code.