Spicy Web Designer Interview with Joseph Longstreet

Joseph Longstreet is a web designer from Kansas City in Missouri in the United States. He first started designing websites back when he discovered Flash 4 and he has been interested in web design ever since. Joe studied at Marquette University (’08) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and received his degree in advertising which has given him a strong understanding of client relations.

1. How did you get started in web design?

I was probably about 13 when Flash 4 came out (back when it was a macromedia product) and my dad needed to spend some extra cash so he didn’t lose it to taxes. He thought flash looked cool and I started playing with it right away. My first animation was crashing rocket ship.

2. When did you start designing websites?

I probably didn’t start making websites until I was in high school. I took an HTML class and learned table based design, seems almost useless now.

3. What are the biggest challenges that you face in web design currently?

Dealing with clients! Recently I’ve been working with marketing directors and they seem to have a preconceived idea of what everything should look like. I think that’s great as long as the branding looks good. But sometimes it’s pure shit and I have to battle with them all the time.

4. Do you ever refer to yourself as a Front-end developer or a web designer?  Do you code any of the web sites that you design currently?  If so, what language(s) do you code in?

Yeah, I refer to myself by a lot of different names, just depends on who I’m talking to. I write all of the code for my websites, I specialize in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I’m also getting kind of decent at OOP stuff like ActionScript.

5. Where did you go to school and has it helped you become a better web design professional?

I went to Marquette University (’08) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My degree was in advertising so I didn’t learn a ton about design of code but it has helped me deal with client relations stuff a bit.

6. Since you first started how has the web design industry changed? Has it changed for the better? If so, how? If not, please explain?

When I was in college it seemed like everyone was trying to go flash, but that trend seemed to die out as people realized the power of search engines. I think it was for the better. If you don’t have a small experienced team of people working on a flash site, it’s probably going to be ugly.

7. What are your favorite tools to use when designing a website? Why are they your favorite tools?

For layout it seems like nothing really beats Photoshop. It just allows me to do whatever I want to do. Photoshop – One window web design. As far as writing code goes, I usually use text wrangler, but I really need to buy Coda to speed things up a bit.