Graphic Design Setup in California, US

Name: Richard Soledad

Location: San Marcos, California, US

Occupation: Freelance Creative Designer

Room size: 13,4 m² (144 ft²), desk area fitted in 0,5 m² (5 ft²) corner

Cost of the setup: ~$4K for the main setup which includes the computer, desk, headphones and gaming console. Other things are gifted or given.

Social media: Instagram

Website: 5inbetween.com

Hey, Richard! Tell us a bit about yourself

My name is Richard, and I am a Creative Designer based in San Marcos, CA. Or San Diego, if it makes things easier to geographically locate.

It’s a little hard even for me to believe it, but I have been designing for close to twenty years now, give or take. Like a lot of designers, I started off with much simpler things, like being that one guy who has slightly above-average fine motor skills that knows a few more colours than the ones in the rainbow.

But much to the bewilderment of a lot of people, not all of my past design professions have been quite glamorous. After college, I worked as a Window Display artist for a chain of malls in the Philippines, surviving 12-16 hour shifts which left me coming home sometimes as late (or early) as 2 am.

If I had a dream job, it would have been to be a professional illustrator during my post-college years. But due to life being not as simple as we would like, my love for it fell away as I decided to concentrate more on landing a job as a legitimate graphic designer.

When I moved to the US, the crucible of my career started in the Production Team of a small local business newspaper. 5% design, 95% production work. It taught me a lot about the value of parameters in design that even to now I still carry.

I also had a career stint as a 3D Visual Effects Artist, proudly being able to work alongside other people in several major motion picture titles. Man of Steel and The Little Mermaid were my favourites but only got to be credited for the former.

I called it a stint as it did not feel like that was the role I was meant to play long-term. Aside from the fact that I knew absolutely nothing about 3D, the skills they required were more in tune with spatial intelligence and some creative problem solving than actual 3D software know-how.

After several other in-office jobs as a designer over the years, life eventually encouraged me (very convincingly) to pursue the very scary thought of working freelance at home. This allowed me to be more present with my family, being able to help out and tend to the children’s needs.

This in turn made me realise the “5 minute in-betweens” of my life — taking my eldest to school; feeding our youngest — were the very things that I missed while I was too busy with my career. Hence, my username: 5.inbetween.

This year is the start of my third year of working from home. I am fortunate enough that aside from the family being home with me, transitioning to working from home during the start of the pandemic was a bit simpler for me.

Now I get to design for clients and companies without having to worry about missing those little moments, all 5-minute in-betweens of them.

Can you describe your home setup?

I’m a Windows guy if it’s not evident yet from my photos. More specifically, their Surface line of devices.

I fell in love with the Surface line when they first announced them back in 2015. I knew that I wanted to work my way up to owning them one day.

My biggest computer purchase then was the first-gen Surfacebook, but I could only reach the i7, 8GB RAM instead of the 16GB one. Eventually, I paid it off after a year and a half of freelance work. And by then I knew that working my way up to get the Studio was definitely possible.

My main workhorse now is the Microsoft Surface Studio 2 (32GBs RAM, 2TB) with the first-gen Surface Book (i7, 8GB) as my mobile workstation. The Studio, as I like to call it, handles all of my graphic design and illustration needs with flying colours.