Ready for some interesting graphics?  I recently visited the website of Michelle Seixas at NOZnaweb.com.  NOZnaweb.com has a good portfolio with some interesting style in their  graphic work.  NOZ is located in Brazil, but they have recently had several projects in Angola.

How did you get into web design?  “I met webdesign like the most…at home, just like a hobby, but since the beginning I knew that it was what I wanted to do. So I studied to have knowledge and experience to work with it.”

Do you remember the very first site you designed?  “Thank God I don’t remember it!!! Probably was something very ugly and poor, cause it was long time ago…”

Do you submit your design works to showcase sites for reviews? How much does other people’s opinion matter to you? Has anybody ever told you anything negative about your website? How do you deal with criticism?  “I think its very important to have other opinions, cause people have different point of view of the same thing, and its good to know what other professionals sees in our work. The negative point in showcase sites is the guy who goes there only to detract other people jobs, but we need to be patient with them, when people don’t have talent to grow up, they try to put people down on their level.”

Have you ever worked with website templates?  “I’ve never work with them, but I’m not against this kind of work. We have thousands of great templates over the web, but me and my partners believe that the best solutions are the custom ones, where everything are based on a study about the client, his customers and objectives.”

What do you think about Flash technology?  “Everything used properly gives us great results. All we need to do is make a study about the better solution for our problems, and in many cases Flash demonstrate a good performance allied to possibilities that only it has. We’ve migrated to AS3 and I can say there’s a lot of great things we can do with it and lot more are coming.”

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Flash?  “As I was saying, Flash have interactivity, design, and a lot of animation things we can use, giving to the user a great experience. On the other hand, we have to deal with little bandwidth, primarily here in Brazil and Angola, where the majority ursers have an 300kbps connection.”

What does “clean interface” mean to you?  “The one wich we can easily find what we are searching for, or that’s enough pleasant to make us navigate even that we aren’t searching for something.”

What language do you use for coding? Why?  “Some cases I use ActionScript 3.0, but when I’m developing without Flash, I work with PHP ally to MySQL and JavaScript. They have a good integration and enables secure resources.”

What are your sources of inspiration?  “All kind of art, since a music to a painting…Image banks are a great source too.”

What is it you most like and dislike about being a web designer?  “I love webdesign. I always wanted to make this hobby my professional activity, cause there’s nothing more rewarding than work with something that makes you happy, but we live on a country where the webdesign isn’t evolved enough, people aren’t investing properly, so we have to compete with kids that think webdesign is only to know how to make a funny effect in Photoshop, and write some tags on Dreamweaver, cause they have a ‘better’ price.”

What advice would you give to beginning web designers?  “Do not give up! Study a LOT. Do things the better way you can, and always search for the best solutions. And remember that a good site, is not only a cute design, it needs to make sense and have a purpose.”

Thank you Michelle for the interesting viewpoints on web design.  We wish you inspiration with graphics and continued success in webdesign.

Ever Upward,
Arthur Browning