Archive for the ‘Designer Interviews’ Category
Web Templates Blog is branching out. Our new blog, Design Interviews, will feature interviews of webpage designers with interesting portfolios and usable web development savvy.
If you are a web designer please contact me by comment to this blog post and send me a link to your webpage. I am always on the lookout for good designers. We will announce the URL of the new Designer Interview Website as soon as it opens.
Meanwhile browse my super duper archives for the most sparkling wit and humor available anywhere in the whole web world.
Your Template Soulmate,
Arthur Browning
Webpage design has always changed rapidly with new developments in the Web. SEO, Flash, feeds, CSS, and blogs have all impacted webpage design. Considering the poliferation of coding shorcuts with online sitebuilders and design packages like Front Page and Dreamweaver it’s no wonder website design has both simplified in
some ways and gotten more complex in other ways.
Over the last year I have been studying the uses of webpage templates. These ready-designed webpage templates are now made for almost every possible use, from blogging to Flash to Liquid CSS applications. In one respect it’s easy to understand why the price of web templates has been falling too. It’s easier, cost and time effective, to make 100 of a variety than to make one unique product.
Although the demand for webpages and blogs is expanding geometrically – so have the number of designers and design tools. Webpages can seldom bring the relative price that they once did – just as videocams and laptops have adjusted in price, and usually in quality, over time.
Web templates have been used more and more as their technical and esthetic qualities have improved. In fact, I began asking webpage designers – both amateur and top level professionals – about their use of web templates. The array of responses was very interesting. In addition to conversations with designers, I sent out questionnaires for information on web template use. I also conducted some interviews with webpage designers on my Web Templates Blog.
The results of these verbal and emailed reports was substantial. To summarize what I found I will list the issues most often mentioned by designers. These issues are rank ordered by number of times mentioned.
1) Template Cost vs Project Revenue
2) Time needed to alter a template vs Time needed to design in total
3) Graphics and look of a template vs Time and money to find graphics
4) Client need to see and make decisions from a working template vs Showing original design steps for approval
5) Designer’s familiarity with templates vs Designer’s lack of familiarity with templates.
6) Designer’s desire to do certain parts of a design vs designer’s desire to do the entirety of the design
7) Designer knowledge of a type of template vs Never having worked with a type of template
Ease of code editting vs Ease of code writing
While the major issues are easy to list there were a few other considerations that were mentioned in various ways. These considerations were lumped together into two other categories:
1) Designer comfort with a certain brand of template
2) Designer specialty and/or type of clients
Early on I realized that these issues and resulting decisions, as to when web templates make good design sense, would be almost impossible to quantify. But as a general rule of thumb – it only took 2 clear-cut decisions on the above issues, pro template use, to cause designers to use a template. The last two categories get into a more personal, less calculable area.
I found two other very strong trends in web template usage; these involved: 1) Once a designer begins using templates, they use them more frequently 2) The more freely a designer spoke about using templates in design projects, the more frequently they tended to report that they used
them in projects.
For the designers who interviewed publicly I can provide a few quotes here
with links:
I asked Pat Heard about pricing of his work, particularly a website design like North Shore: “template along with subpages would run around $600 USD. That site was actually a template project, so I created the code, and then gave it to my client for him to create the subpages, so it ended up costing him $350.”
Isaac Forman: “I have created custom templates for other development companies. . . For clients on a budget or someone starting out in the industry, I think they would be a useful tool – either simply to get a quality site online, or as a learning process.”
I wanted to know about Stuart Robertson’s experiences with website templates. “I think giving people a choice of nice looking and well coded templates when theya’re getting started is a good idea. Once they’ve been using their site for a while they can make more informed decisions about what they would like to see in a custom website design, and hire a professional web designer to create it.”
I asked Adrian Mullan if he had ever worked with website templates. “Yes, I’ve used a few good templates over the years. . . http://www.templatemonster.com/ , http://www.oswd.org/ , http://www.pixellogo.com/ , http://www.designgalaxy.net/ . . . I think the true test of any website template is how easy it is to modify the template to suit your needs. While many templates look great on the surface, they can be a nightmare to modify. Occasionally we see templates where the original PSD file is hard to work with because the layers are not properly named/organized – but it’s getting better. . . It would nice to see more template providers go towards lean and mean templates, instead of the usual flashy stuff. . . The problem is, if you pull the regular person off the street and ask them “what do you think of this website” instinctively they will base their decision on the aesthetics (not content, usability, search engine friendliness, etc). Having said that, I can understand why template providers promote graphics intensive layouts.”
I asked Kimberly Barreda had she ever worked with website templates? “Extensively – we have 14 sites in the network and I believe 10 are template based. I used to use Moira’s web jewels, then I paid a known cartoonist to design some, then I found Template Monster. Moira’s was fun, they were free. . .Template Monster has worked out really well for us.”
I asked Robert Burridge about templates: “I personally specialise in template editing (HTML, etc.) since by using a template we are able to offer our customers the very best product at the lowest amount of time and money. . .I have worked with web templates since 2002; 80% of my work is based on templates.”
Numerous other conversations and questionnaires provided similar anecdotes and viewpoints. I expect a boom in the near future of CSS based blog sites for both business and recreational use. As a side question I often asked bloggers about WordPress Templates usage. Notably blogs are becoming more complex and more beautiful. Bloggers like variety in their themes. Two examples of WordPress themes:
Christine Rodriguez: “I set up a family recipe repository. . . I’ve been blogging for four years but this particular site is new . . . I blog for fun. . . I love it. It’s simple, elegant design, and very easy to install.”
Aspire Youth Ministries: Jessica Weiser explained, “I customized the design for our website, but overall the theme was okay.”
My Way or The Highway,
Arthur Browning
Call for Web Designers – Email for Interview
Web Templates Blog is planning to begin a new sister blog, Design Interviews. The new blog will be dedicated to interviewing webpage designers with interesting portfolios and usable web development savvy.
If you are a web designer please contact me by comment to this blog post and send me a link to your webpage. I am always on the lookout for good designs.
Stay tuned for the URL of the new site and further announcements as I progress in the completion of the website.
From that Wild, Wacky, Wonderful World of the Web,
Arthur Browning
Interview: MATT MARQUARDT
I looked at an interesting portfolio a couple of weeks ago. Great layouts, tightly concise design, fast-loading, great color – in short a fine style of designing. The website is owned by Matt Marquardt of Breakthrough Webdesign.
I interviewed Matt: “got into web design through some friends that were trying it out back in the ’90s. It looked like a promising field/career and seemed like a lot of fun so I decided to give it a try. . .The very first site I designed, if you can call it a web site, was a very basic page or two in my first HTML class. It just had a few links, pictures and a little JavaScript.”
Where do you get your art for your webpages? “I have a fairly vast library of clip art and other photos at my disposal for my web pages. I will purchase art from various sources and then use it over and over again with modifications so that it looks different on each site.”
What kind of developments do you foresee in webdesign? “The next big development in web page design will likely be the continued evolution to multi-media in web pages. We will see ever more audio, video and animation in web pages as browsers, personal computers and Internet connection speed for the average user improve.”
“I have worked with web page templates but only when I was employed at my former job. In my business, I never use templates, as I find them as much work as a custom site. . .I was given templates built by former employees at my old job to work with. I find templates to be non-satisfying to customers, as they usually want their own look and unique web site instead of a templated look.”
“I like Flash technology and welcome it. Now that the Flash plug-ins are fairly widespread and easy to obtain, and the tools to build Flash animations are easy to work with, I welcome it. . . Flash advantages would be that it can take a plain web site to a new level of personalization for the customer and impriove the visitor’s experience. Flash disadvantages would be possible slow-down of page loading time, lack of plug-ins for visitors, and, if the Flash isn’t designed or implemented properly, a poor experience for visitors.”
“My sources of inspiration are my customers…just making them successful while at the same time growing my business and reputation is all the motivation I need.”
“My favorite web site designs that I did not design would be: cnn.com, espn.com, and other sleek news sites like those.”
” My toughest project was masoncity.net web site project. It involved nearly 20 city departments with unique log-ins that allowed them to manage their own parts of the web site, like add/remove pages, update pages, change navigation link order, and other tools.”
“My interests in web page design would mainly be in keeping up with the industry and staying up to date in the latest trends not only in the design of a web site but in achieving search engine rankings that bring visitors to the sites. My dislikes in web page design would be simply the amount of attention to detail that is sometimes required in certain
projects. It can be mind-bending!”
Thankyou Matt for you viewpoints and layouts.
The Template Prophet,
Arthur Browning
Interview: ASH HARRIS
For the internet – web design, internet marketing and SEO go hand in hand. I found a designer who has a great approach to website design, Ash Harris of Kinetic Web Media, LLC – aka ShakeYourBusiness.com.
How did you get into web design? “I’ve always been an artistic person with an eye for layout and design. I had a friend in college who started the font website www.FontFace.com. This was my introduction to web design and development. After college, I went to work for a creative firm and learned how creative business worked. They also trained me on the basics of web design as of 2000. I then moved to a technology company and learned how a tech company was run and then the next natural step was to branch out and try my own business. It was a perfect marriage of creative and technical services. So, long story short, design has always appealed to me. I just had to get the technical under my belt and I was on my way to mastering web design.”
Do you remember the very first site you designed? “Aside from the practice sites for classes, the first actual website I worked on was a small website for the tech company that I worked for. It was cool for the year that it was created (2001). As you know, time goes so fast in cyberspace that it was only a matter of a year before it sorely needed replacing.”
You are doing a lot of email marketing. Is this a specialization for you? “It is one of our specializations. We really focus on working with a company to understand the nature of the business and then to help identify and address the needs of the company. We work with them in web design and development and then we also work with their marketing approach. We are really a one-stop shop for commercial marketing needs. Our primary purpose is to help businesses become visible – in the virtual marketplace and in the actual marketplace.”
Where do you get your art for these webpages? “There are a number of sources that we have available. We work with professional photographers in some cases. Primarily we use stock photography from photo libraries on the web. Our favorites are Getty Images and iStockphoto.”
What will be the next big development in webpage design? “I am going to say accessibility. It is not going to be long before higher authorities get involved with website development and begin to lay down legal requirements for website structure and presentation of content. Basically, the Internet has to be made ‘accessible’ to individuals with disabilities in much the same way a shopping mall or an office building needs to accomodate them. With a commercial building, we have ramps to allow people in wheelchairs access to the building. On websites, we use high-contrast text and backgrounds providing for people with low vision to be able to read the content. We use other methods to allow screen reading software to read a website to an individual who has no use of his eyes. There are many other strategies and standards that need to be followed as well.”
Have you ever worked with website templates? “I have. In fact, I am currently working with some templates for Joomla!.”
What website template providers have you tried? “I have really been enjoying working with the templates I get from Rocket Themes. Very user friendly, very easy to customize. All around a great product.”
What was your experience with them? “They have great support and great prices. The forums there are very well maintained and the user-base is ready and willing to provide input and assistance.”
What do you think about Flash technology? “It’s beautiful. However, I rarely use it. I think that 99% of websites can get along just fine without it and it is really only useful to Multi-Media and Creative firms to ‘WOW’ their visitors. It’s GREAT for visual effects, but it’s terrible for content delivery. And, I would say many sites abuse it by delivering ALL of their content with it.”
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Flash? “Accessibility comes up with this question as well. Flash is at least VERY difficult and at most, impossible, to make accessible to an individual using a screen reader. Again, Flash is beautiful if used in the correct ways, but, if your entire site is flash, you are going to be losing a segment of your website visitors, and you are going to be limiting how much search-engines can ‘spider’ on your site – unless you take care to provide content specifically for the spiders.’
What are your sources of inspiration? “Here are several GREAT sources for inspiration: Website Design Ideas:
- www.monstertemplates.com
- www.bamag.com (Before & After Magazine)
- www.coolhomepages.com
Colors
- www.colorschemer.com
Books:
- Layout Index
Just to name a few.
VERY IMPORTANT – I suggest to any designer that when they surf, they should definitely be keeping an organized set of bookmarks so they can come back to a site that has great content or a site that just knocks their socks off.”
What are your favorite website designs that you did NOT design yourself? “I used to like www.apple.com – but it is really in need of an update. Adobe has come a long way – www.adobe.com – cool new design merged with Macromedia solutions. www.bamag.com is a nice clean design.
I also really like these sister sites:
- http://trendwatching.com/
- http://springwise.com/”
What was the toughest project or customer situation you’ve encountered? “I was once blamed for mis-handling a customer’s meta tags. The client was selling a holiday product and we deployed their site in mid October. They were baffled when they weren’t at the top of search engines in time to do a HUGE amount of sales for Christmas. I was blamed – basically for not getting them to the Top 10 on Google and Yahoo! within a couple of weeks. And here’s the kicker – they never asked me to do it. They assumed it was part of the project price. When I tried to explain, the situation got stickier. In the end, I lost the customer and I learned a valuable lesson about educating clients.”
What are your interests and dislikes in webpage design? “I LOVE the design process – the process of finding inspiration and injecting life into designs and the message of the site. I love the artistic side of it. I love meeting new people and helping them solve problems and bringing them solutions for their website and their image. The business side is difficult just because of the details and the paperwork. It’s just a lot to keep track of.”
Thankyou Ash for the expertise and experiences.
Template Impresario,
Arthur Browning
Interview: GARETH DAVIES
Websites particularly designed for SEO and the SEO optimization of already established business webpages is booming. This is especially so for businesses that are pushing to do greater volume and/or expand regionally or glogally.
I looked through the website of GSINC and saw an array of these services. I contacted Gareth Davies, owner of GSINC, for an interview.
How did you get into web design? “In my late teens and early twenties I was a songwriter/musician in a number of bands. Some of the music made its way to the music press and national radio stations, but alas the bands never made it big. Through my time promoting the bands throughout the early ˆ“ mid nineties I undertook the design duties for flyers, promo posters and CD covers. In around 1997 we set up our first website which was really a web page.”
“I also studied design, helped out at the local college in the art department for a couple of years and had done some graphics training at college. I also loved photography too so a combination of these skills was a pretty good foundation for web design.”
Do you remember the very first site you designed? “Yeah it would have been the band one but it was really a montage of photos and bio info. In a way it was a bit like a crude MySpace page with no multi-media. Then the first site I can remember after that would have been for an artist and was a flash website. It had 5 minute animated sequences to get to each section it was not very practical as it took about half an hour to navigate around the site but it was certainly an experience and quite different to a lot of other UK sites at the time.”
You now do a lot of SEO – Is this a speciality for you? “Yes for the last 6 years where we have been involved in web design. we also worked in promotion of the sites. Our priorities have moved more towards site promotion as technology has advanced and clients can now get better off the shelf products to build in house. It is not uncommon now for us to design flats, clients can integrate the designs and then we come on board again to promote the site. This works well for the client and ourselves.”
“The new site, www.gsinc.co.uk/ was designed by our team of designers. It was originally created as flat designs, then our CSS expert produced a coded version of the main homepage. The site contains a lot more multimedia than your average SEO firm site as it even includes SEO video tutorials!”
“The site is always changing and we do not stay with a static design we track site activity and our pages will change every time we learn something new so building a website and leaving it online for months, for years is no longer an option.”
What will be the next big development in Web Design? “Difficult one to answer but I suspect we will see a move away from static text driven pages and use more multimedia however I don’t mean lots of animations that serve no purpose but more what we thought would happen in 2000 2001 (but the bandwidth was not there for users). Both technology and connection speed make interactive PC TV style browsing the likely next step for web design.”
“The other industry development we can see happening is that companies will become more niche and specialise more. The days of the one stop shop little web firm that says it can do every design job under the sun will go. People want specialists and I think this is the way commercially things are going. Some firms will just code ECommerce templates, others will just do CSS, others will just do Flat designs and others just the Marketing. This will work better for clients as they get the best people for each part of the job.”
Have you worked with website Templates? “No. Though we have had clients bring them to us where they have bought them and have then wanted to enhance the site. Some of the web templates out there these days are impressive. Our experience is that some clients will never be able to edit them as easily as they would like too and will probably need some professional assistance to get a site finished and looking great.”
What do you think about Flash Technology? “Flash revolutionised web design really. It brought the web to life and opened up many possibilities. As it became more accessible and widely used it inevitably got overused by some folks and its here it got its reputation for being annoying animations but the beauty of flash was its ability to allow great motion graphics and bring TV to the web. In 2007 Flash is very powerful and the flash player has allowed what we thought it could do and is the platform of choice on so many big sites now including Youtube. . .Well from an SEO point of view flash is a bit of a non-starter. It is just not going to cut it. So if high rankings are part of the plan then Flash pages alone are not enough and you have to figure in some static HTML text. Another downside is poor use of the medium there are so many newbies using flash and trying to make everything spin and move on a web page they lose site of functionality. If every copy of flash came with a usability guide written by Jacob Neilsen and you had to read it before you could start building in flash the web might be a better place. . . The advantages are that 95%+ of people can see it. Its fast to download most content and its probably the best streaming media content out there right now so great for streaming websites, audio, video, games and interactive competitions.”
What are your sources of inspiration? “In terms of great web designers I would say:
1. Hillman Curtis (probably my overall favourite – GD)
2. Hi Res! (agency in UK)
3. Joshua Davis
4. Eric Jordan
But design ideas and themes can come from art ˆ“ I have had lots of ideas from artists, visiting galleries, TV/Film trailers,
photography, advertising billboards, product packaging, flyers and sales letters ˆ“ the list is pretty endless.”
Thankyou Gareth for your insights and experiences.
Arthur Browning
Interview: LAURIE MARCH
Yes, I’ve been cruising the web again – always looking for interesting webpages. I was looking for graphic design as incorporated into webpages and found GJ Studios. After looking at GJ’s portfolio I contacted them for information. Laurie March, the Owner and Creative Director consented to interview.
How did you get into web design? “My career in web design happened purely by accident. I was a well known teddy bear artist selling my wares through shows and in stores. I had done a website or two just for fun and I thought that perhaps the internet would be a good way to reach teddy bear collectors and potential customers. I networked with many other teddy bear artists and before I knew it I was designing their websites. Within 11 months I had my first corporate client and had to make the decision of which way to take my career. Here I am – a decade later.”
Do you remember the very first site you designed? “I remember it as if it were yesterday. It was a fun site to share all of my favorite internet finds with my friends.”
You are doing a lot of graphic design, is this a specialization for you? “My specialties are graphic design, layout and writing. Currently I am working on several outdoor adventure related sites (http://www.wildernesscleanup.com and http://www.friendsofchiniguchi.com which aren’t in my portfolio yet. It is a specialization for me because backpacking and canoeing are also my hobbies. I also own http://www.outdooradventurecanada.com.”
Where do you get your art for these webpages? “I create all of my own art except in a few cases. Often clients will already have a logo or photographs and I will work those into the design. Sometimes I will use elements from client provided artwork.”
What will be the next big development in webpage design? “I think that the next big development is actually a return to a more simple style of page. We’ve already watched it happen with Flash intros. For the longest time everyone wanted a little intro movie for their site. I find that people are going back to basics with the style of the sites. I do feel that along with clean, minimalistic design, you will see more interactivity and personalization.”
What kind of templates have you designed? “I’ve designed templates for customers who needed graphics and simple html that they could work with easily. I’ve also designed graphics/layouts for other designers to use. I only design exclusive templates which can be used in many ways.”
What do you think about Flash technology? “Flash as a medium is interesting, creative and allows for more flexibility. I enjoy sites that combine flash with other technologies.”
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Flash?
“I find that flash is not very search engine friendly and that editing the site later on requires a little more effort than a standard HTML based project.”
What are your sources of inspiration? “Clients are my main source of inspiration. Sometimes it is their personality and other times it is what they are trying to acheive that inspires. Mother Nature is my second source. Color is everywhere in the natural world and you can see beautiful combinations everywhere you look.”
What are your favorite website designs that you did NOT design yourself? “Now that is a tough one. I really like http://www.blackfeather.com, http://www.guelphflowers.com/flowercare.html and http://www.macrophotography.com.”
What was the toughest project or customer situation you’ve encountered? “The toughest customer situation I’ve encountered was telling a client that the entire site was lost because our business and home burned to the ground two days before the launch of his huge online store. We had a meeting scheduled for 1 pm and everything was lost that morning. I was so frazzled at almost losing our lives that I forgot to call and cancel the meeting and he showed up to a smouldering pile of ashes. He was great about it. Everything worked out in the end, the insurance company covered his losses and I still do work for him.”
What are your interests and dislikes in webpage design? “My interests in webpage design are purely graphical. I love to see a site where a designer has broken out of the traditional mold. I dislike cookie cutter sites that have nothing interesting to offer the eye. I dislike overly cluttered sites and overuse of animation.”
Thankyou Laurie for the viewpoints and the beautiful graphic layouts.
The Maestro of Web Templates,
Arthur Browning
Interview: MARC TRACY
Used in the right way a Flash Intro or Flash Template can make a great impression. Finding Flash applications that are fast-loading and don’t stop your SEO is the biggie.
I recently visited the Smarter Systems website of Marc Tracy and saw some great client sites I asked Marc for an interview.
How did you get into web design? “Website Design was a natural progression for me. Initially in 1991, I was building Network Computers for my clients, then my varied clientele were asking for websites for their businesses and as I have an artistic flair I found it quite simple to create a unique web presence for each.”
Do you remember the very first site you designed? “Yes indeed, My first website was for Hanwells Car Centre in London. Hanwells sell pre-owned Bentley and Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. They were unhappy with the service they were getting from the company they were with and asked me to construct a comprehensive web site for them. Initially their business was concentrated on the west of London area, but after 5 Years Hanwells now have an enviable worldwide reputation as the largest retailer of these luxury vehicles They now sell Bentley and Rolls Royce Automobiles to all corners of planet.
“You are doing a lot of Flash Animations, is this a specialization for you? “Yes, I love the ability of expression that Flash allows me, I am incredibly passionate about my work and I find that small Flash movies enhance the pages I create, giving the end user a unique experience that holds their attention long enough for my clients message to really hit home.”
Where do you get your art for these webpages? “Mostly the artwork for our pages come directly from the clients themselves. Some I create myself, Some is sourced from Libraries and rarely, some is outsourced. We have to evaluate each project on it’s own merits and always keep an open mind with regard to creating imagery worthy of the clients particular product or service. We never forget that the client has a choice of web designer.”
What will be the next big development in webpage design? “Who knows! Personally I believe we will have more interactive websites. In my world the client is always King and the end user benefits from the fruit of our labors. I am always excited by the possibility of a challenge.”
Have you ever worked with website templates? “Yes indeed, We started creating Website Templates some years ago, mainly for Car Showrooms these have received great exposure and form a substantial part of our business portfolio.”
What website template providers have you tried? “We have found over a period of time that for various reasons, we and our clientele were not satisfied with the majority of templates on offer and always preferred to create our own.”
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Flash? “We have found that Flash is an amazing tool but feel that it is better utilized in small quantities as with many of our websites.”
What are your sources of inspiration? “Our Clients… always.”
What are your favorite website designs that you did NOT design yourself? “http://www.jacquielawson.com  This is a remarkable website the quality of the work is truly exceptional http://www.bentleymotors.com This is a very Classy Website http://www.sanibel-resort.com  This is a well constructed website. I spent my 5th anniversary here and it certainly lives up to the website, or vice-versa.”
What was the toughest project or customer situation you’ve encountered? “This is a really difficult question for me to answer. I’ve never come across a situation that presented a really overwhelming problem. In tough situations I go back to the client with my team and we work through the specifics until a solution presents itself. Which it always does.”
What are your interests and dislikes in webpage design?
“Broken Links and Bad Navigation are possibly the worst elements of website design and yet there are so many websites that are not properly maintained, resulting in the end user giving up on the site and moving swiftly along to another website. At SMARTERsystems we pride ourselves on the maintenance of our websites at all times.”
Thankyou Marc for the info and fine examples.
Dreaming the Future,
Arthur Browning
Interview: CARLOS DANTAS
As you know, I love small business websites. The variety of the designs is amazing. The needs of the owner, the types of products they sell, the inclinations of the designer are all manifest in these varies webpages. Using webpage templates for small business websites is my focus.
I recently looked throught the website of Carlos Dantas and saw some very good designs – so I had to interview Carlos.
How did you get into web design? “I always had the passion for arts and any creative form of expression. In 1979 with some college’s classmates to develop a program for our business school project anyway I became more addicted to the internet in 1985 when I came to the US to study marketing and design for the advertising industry.”
Do you remember the very first site you designed? “Yes I do, my first professional website was made in 1991 for a Brazilian company call ME Editora this site is no longer available on the internet.”
Where do you get your art for these web pages? “Basically from my own ideas and some from what you see on the internet. I have in mind that what is important for any web designer is to accommodate the customer’s message with the layout. It is very important to understand the business, their marketing niche, if you are designing a personal site you have to understand the person’s ideas, which you as a designer have to express on the webpage.”
What will be your next project? “The new autoseats.com website, it is full auto accessories store the pilot is on you can check it out http://www.autoseats.com/newSite/ it will be lunched on June of 2007.”
Have you ever worked with website templates? “Yes I do work with them sometimes, especially when clients bring the templates to us for integration and changes to accommodate their ideas and business to it. You can be creative but not all the time, so it is important to be open for someone’s ideas and take the good from these ideas and bring it to your work.”
What website template providers have you tried? “I have worked with the Boxedart.com and Templatemonster.com templates.”
What was your experience with them? “I personally do not have much experience, because as I told you previously usually the clients bring the templates, but all the templates we have had to change or work with were well done and easy to change and integrate to the original client’s project.”
What do you think about Flash technology? “I see Flash technology as the jewelry of the internet. Let me explain it. Flash is an important accessory, but not the body, unless the brand name itself is so powerful that you can design the site in flash and it won’t compromises the search index or the download time. I.e. Disney or Coca-Cola, etc…”
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Flash? “The advantages is the animation and multimedia capabilities that make flash the most powerful instrument to enhance any website, Flash brought to the internet, life, interaction, you can design your site to achieve the 2 must important senses (Audio and Visual) to be successful on any message you have to delivery, but the disadvantages is that if you populate the site with to much flash movies, menus, it can be very trick to be indexed by the search engines and then we come to the dilemma beautiful but not found, or to hard to be indexed. The search engines, besides google, yahoo and others that claim their spiders can index flash movies; if you run a search on those engines you don’t see much of full flash websites on the first 5 pages. Most companies, for example don’t have Disney characters tied to their products.”
What are your sources of inspiration? “I use my entire surroundings, my personal experiences, my imagination and I put my self always open to new ideas and up to understand the client’s business. I also have in mind that You ‘Can’t Please All of the People All of the Time’ it is impossible then you have to express the client’s personality and their point of view.”
What are your favorite website designs that you did NOT design yourself? “http://www.netinho.com.br – click on Entrar”
What was the toughest project or customer situation you’ve encountered? “http://www.Masterpiecefactory.com this website is in constant development and the project is huge involving most of all internet technologies and the client is very creative and demanding, constant alterations and updates to the site which makes this project the toughest, maybe the correct word is the most challenging, of all times.”
What are your interests and dislikes in webpage design?
“Every aspect of the webpage design interests me. The fact that you can create anything amazes me and the constant technology development makes you never loose the urge to learn and discovery new frontiers. I have no dislikes, when you love what you do there is no dislikes, maybe to let it go, because each project is like your child and is very hard sometimes to let our babies go LOL.”
Thankyou Carlos for the benefits of your experience and your viewpoints.
Mr. Special,
Arthur Browning
Interview: ANDREY SMAGIN
Ecommerce websites are a big industry. My articles on small and medium size businesses – and their need for a webpage, is often about webpage templates applications. Larger, more complex Ecommerce websites have their own strengths, problems and solutions. I found a company that specializes is Ecommerce webpages. When I wrote to them they agreed to let me interview Andrey Smagin, Creative Director at Solid Cactus.
How did you get into web design? “I was working at a local newspaper designing print ads for a local market and was really attracted by the web. That was about 10 years ago. By that time I had some experience in html but it was limited to text-only browsers like Lynx. I started thinking about creating a website for the newspaper and came up with several ideas. None of them was picked by editors but I knew I had a new career ahead of me.”
Do you remember the very first site you designed? “It was that newspaper site that the web has never seen. It worked on my computer though.”
You are doing a lot of Ecommerce, is this a specialization for you? “Ecommerce web design is a specialization for our company and 95% of what I do is sites that sell something online.”
Where do you get your art for these webpages? “I try to create original art every time when it is possible. But we use stock photography at Solid Cactus a lot too. Lately, Istockphoto.com has been a great source of original and affordable imagery.”
What will be the next big development in webpage design? “There is not going to be ‘webpage design’. The web is going to go further and further from print and the phrase ‘web page’ won’t be used much. Websites will be more and more interactive and multimedia rich, and nobody will know if they are still on the same page or not. It’s already happening. Ajax, Flex and technologies like these will make the web more like a desktop experience, and I think eventually it will replace desktop completely for the most users.”
Have you ever worked with website templates? “Not for our clients. It probably depends on what kind of templates you are asking about. A template is an already designed solution used many times. I usually work on original designs but use templates in some web products, like blogs for example.”
What do you think about Flash technology? “It’s amazing and will continue it’s development and it will be next thing since it provides best possibilities for multimedia design. And ultimately that’s the direction where web is moving.”
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Flash? “Too many to list here. But as with any powerful tool it can be dangerous when people don’t know how to use it. At the same time it gives tremendous opportunity for careful and creative designers and developers to build best experiences online.”
What are your sources of inspiration? “My life, music, nature.”
What are your favorite website designs that you did? “solidcactus.com, ferretstore.com, blog.solidcactus.com”
What are your favorite website designs that you did NOT design yourself? “apple.com, hicksdesign.co.uk, artlebedev.ru”
What was the toughest project or customer situation you’ve encountered? “Design of our company’s site is probably the
toughest project for me. It has so many functions and has to stay clean, uncluttered and useful for us and our clients. It’s always a work in progress and it gets better and better with time. It’s tough to keep it going, always up in quality and content. We have to make it fresh and consistent at the same time. Maybe that’s why it’s on of my favorite websites solidcactus.com.”
What are your interests and dislikes in webpage design? “I’m interested in everything that has anything to do with web design. And it is hard for me, because there are so many things to know that I’m sometimes wondering if I’m spreading my knowledge too far and it will be too thin. But I tend to believe that the human brain is capable of many things and keep learning more and more new things, new technologies new techniques.”
Thankyou Andrey for your thoughts and insights on webpage design.
Reporting Live from Winter Wonderland,
Arthur Browning
