I was looking at some design sites last week and ran across a great looking portfolio. The designs have an excellent compositional look and they work simply and effectively. Linda White is the designer and I think you will like her website, Design by Linda. When I asked Linda for an interview she agreed.

How did you get into web design? “I was in college getting my Computer Programming Degree and had to take a required Web Design and Development Course. I found that I thoroughly enjoyed web design and changed my college curriculum to Web Design.”

Do you remember the very first site you designed? “The first web site that I designed professionally was for Farrell’s US Martial Arts . I am still the Webmaster for this company. The web site has been updated and redesigned several times over the past 7 years.”

You are doing a lot of small business web sites and custom shopping carts, is this a specialization for you? “Yes, I specialize in Small Business web site development and Custom Shopping Cart Development. My typical client is usually a small retail business or service type business with a limited budget for web site design. My other customer is the small business retail store that is looking for or needing a specialized shopping cart. Often this is a business that has tried and was unhappy with a pre-built shopping cart. I build all shopping carts from “scratch” using ASP to the clients’
specifications.”

Where do you get your art for these webpages? “I get art work from various sources – stock/clip art, graphic designers, or photos provided by my clients. I am not a graphic designer but I am able to do some simple custom graphic design for my web sites.”

What will be the next big development in webpage design? “I think CSS will continue to be the big thing. What I am seeing in trends are web sites actually taking a step back to more simplistic, clean designs. The flashy, glitzy web sites are becoming a thing of the past. I think business web sites are realizing that people come to their web sites for information and not for entertainment.”

Have you ever worked with website templates? “I do not work with templates. I find them too restrictive. I prefer to custom develop my sites.”

What do you think about Flash technology? “I think flash has its place. Using flash as an enhancement for your web site is great.”

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Flash? “Building a web site completely in Flash, in my opinion, is a bad move for many reasons – it is more costly to develop up front, more costly to edit; the search engines can not ‘read’ flash, so getting a good ranking will be much more difficult; the file sizes are larger causing pages to load slower (there are still people on dial-up). Flash makes a nice presentation for ‘rotating’ graphics. Movies also work well with Flash as most people have the flash player.”

What are your sources of inspiration? “I look at other web sites. I look at my client’s competitor sites. I also work with graphic designers.”

What are your favorite website designs that you did NOT design yourself? “Tiffany & Co. I love the elegant simplicity of this web site.”

What was the toughest project or customer situation you’ve encountered? “The toughest situation was the client who did not know what they wanted. This client provided no assistance in the design of the site. No matter what I presented, they did not like it, but they could not define what they didn’t like or what they would like. I finally had to give up as it was apparent that the customer and I were not a good match. Sometimes this happens and it is best to just let the client know that it is not going to work out.”

What are your interests and dislikes in webpage design? “I like it all. I really don’t have any dislikes. It always gives me a good feeling to provide a web site to a client that they are please with and that works well in their marketing efforts.”

Linda, I appreciate your point-of-view. I really enjoyed looking at your portfolio as well.

Ever Ready,
Arthur Browning