Design Workspace with Two Standing Desks in Cape Town, South Africa

Name: Daniel Klopper

Location: Cape Town, South Africa

Occupation: Multidisciplinary Designer

Room size: 32 m² (345 ft²)

Social media: Instagram, Twitter

Hello! Tell us a bit about yourself

Hi 👋 — my name is Daniel.

I’m a product designer, but I generally refer to myself as a multidisciplinary designer as I don’t just do product work.

I currently work full-time at GoDaddy in the mobile tier of the business, where I focus on a product called Studio. It used to be an app called Over and was acquired by GoDaddy and rebranded about two years ago.

I also consult with a few companies and take on additional freelance work in my spare time outside of the realm of product design. I enjoy working on 3D interior design and app icon design projects.

I studied Electrical Engineering and always tinkered in creative mediums along the way.

Music was my gateway to design.

Being obsessed with bands and playing in one, I stumbled onto Myspace and started designing and customising Myspace pages.

This led to apparel design, particularly for the music industry.

I then discovered Flash & ActionScript and was inspired by the work from studios such as 2Advanced and the North Kingdom back then.

A lot of my life has been focused on creativity, and I’ve been in it for 15+ years.

I try to provide good advice to other peers and designers and often mentor a few designers starting out in their careers. Giving back to the community where I can in a small way.

Outside of work, I enjoy being active playing field hockey and spending time with my wife, son, and our adorable cocker spaniel Finn.

Take us through your setup

I have two setups.

One for day-to-day work, and the other setup I got exclusively for 3D work.

Here’s my main setup:

The reasoning behind the two setups came largely from exploring 3D more during the pandemic.

I started on my old iMac and quickly realised it was struggling to do basic still renders that I was interested in.

I used to be an iMac person — but recently moved to the M1 MacBook, and it has been a good upgrade.

So for work and product/UI, I’m exclusively on Apple.

I switch over to the PC to work on 3D things.

I did some research and spoke to a few friends in the industry and decided to go the PC route for 3D. (This was before the M1 & M2 Apple machines were announced.)

I kind of like the exclusivity which allows me to switch off from my day job.

Here’s what my second setup consists of:

I generally only have things on my desk that I use daily.

Everything should be functional.