Who are you, and what do you do?
My name is Zoya Feldman, and I am a designer and illustrator. I help run Hype Machine, a music discovery service we've been working on since 2005. I also make cards, stickers, buttons, and t-shirts about the 3 Cs: cats, carbs, and computers.
What hardware do you use?
I split my time between a 2010 Mac Pro with a 27" Cinema Display, and a 2011 MacBook Air you can pry from my cold dongle-free hands. I use a Wacom Bamboo drawing tablet and a CanoScan LiDE 120, and I recently got a new Canon PIXMA iX6820 printer because the power supply on my old one burned out. A printer that can go 13" wide is so nice for mocking up everything from posters to shirts.
For drawing/lettering, I start with a Pilot Fineliner, Speedball pens, or Mack brushes on tracing paper. I have an Alvin cutting mat which doubles as a baseline grid, and I cannot overstate the convenience of a good bone folder for cardmaking.
And what software?
After scanning in drawings, I rework them in Illustrator or color them in Photoshop. My default way to work is vector, but sometimes raster graphics are the right call. I use a lot of public-domain imagery in my designs; Flickr Commons is an absolute goldmine and I wish it well every day of my life.
I use Glyphs Mini for making fonts, and Skala for previewing layouts and graphics on mobile. (It's also the best way I've found of sending images from Photoshop to my phone.) I edit CSS and transfer files in Coda, collect data with Typeform, and meet up with my coworkers in HipChat.
What would be your dream setup?
Pretty psyched on my office nook, though I have been considering getting a mini water dispenser so I don't have to walk the 20 feet to my kitchen.