Paul Carbo, the Logo Designer turned Web Designer from Philly

Paul Carbo is a web designer from Pottstown, Philadelphia in the United States. He has been designing websites for about a year now but he has been designing logos for the past 10 years. Paul started designing logos because he found logo design competitions to compete in and became very interested in learning more about design and the rest is history. Now in his early 30s, working from home on a freelance basis full-time he talks about continuously improving and feeling very proud coming from a self-taught upbringing.

1. When did you design your first website and how did you find the initial experience?

My first attempt at designing and building a website was probably about 3 years ago when I wanted to showcase my logo designs.  I didn’t have the slightest clue as to what I was doing and relied heavily on Dreamweaver.  It’s funny and mighty embarrassing admitting that I sort of knew CSS had something to do with web design, but had no idea what it did or how to use it.  In the same regard, html was a mystery to me as well.  I didn’t hand-edit a bit of code.  I just kept clicking buttons in Dreamweaver until things looked similar to how I wanted it.  Obviously it can be assumed that my first site was entirely tabular. It wasn’t until many sites later and just as I became a table-making master that I learned I was doing things all wrong.  I kept hearing about DIVs and reading that no site should ever be made with tables.  It was pretty discouraging knowing everything I learned up until that point was all for nothing, but at the same time I was determined to learn the proper way of building a site.  This is what really initiated the process of me learning to hand-code html and CSS without the help of Dreamweaver.  At first, it was a daunting process, a lot of trial-and-error as well as many online tutorials, but slowly and surely I weaned myself off of Dreamweaver and eventually learned the right way to make a site.  Without clients even being aware, I actually went back and rebuilt a few of the early sites I made just because I couldn’t stand knowing that they were wrong.

Learning something always leads into 10 more things you need to learn, and just as I figured out the basics of HTML and CSS, it was on to validation.  After validation came cross-browser compatibility.  After that came many more little things that I just was determined to master.  It’s no lie that every single day I am constantly learning something new and for me, it’s what keeps me going.  I love it.  And in the grand scheme of things, I am totally aware that I only really know a small amount and have m uch more learning ahead of me.

2. How many years of professional experience do you have as a web designer?

I have only been designing websites professionally for about a year now, starting out as an utter novice and working my way up to the point I’m at today.  I started out designing logos 10 year ago and it is what led me into the wonderful world of web design.

3. Having been designing for the past 10 years and being completely “Self taught” has not having a college education affected you and if it has then how has it affected you?

This is probably my favorite subject to talk about because like anyone out there who took the time to teach themselves anything, along with that comes a certain level of pride that continuously fuels the desire to always be improving and learning more.  Would I have been better off going to school and being taught?  There’s no way to answer that.

When I was in High School I was an artist.  I was really into painting, illustrating and drawing, but didn’t have a clue as to how to make any kind of career for myself with these skills.  Graphic Design wasn’t even a consideration, probably due to the time of my graduation, 1998.  I’d like to say I had some foresight back then knowing I was capable of teaching myself what I needed to know, but that wasn’t the case. I was cocky, lazy, and I had just spent the past 12 years going to school every day, why would I voluntarily choose to keep going?

A year later, while decently comfortable selling cars for a living, I acquired my first version of Photoshop.  In my spare time I would just play around with it.  During the same time, I was pretty active on a video game forum and became interested in making graphical signatures.  I seemed to catch on pretty quick and started getting requests from other members to make ones for them.  It was pretty addicting and I learned a ton simply by experimenting with techniques learned from online tutorials.

Soon after, I came across a site called Worth1000 and found out they had logo design competitions that actually paid out money.  This was where I began my professional career and when I really starting learning about graphic design.  Photoshop wasn’t the best program to be designing logos, so next I took the time to teach myself CorelDraw.  Learning a vector program really opened up my eyes to the world of design and gave me the confidence in thinking I could actually make a career for myself out of this.

For a long while, I put in a lot of time designing logos for Worth1000, only crossing my fingers and hoping to get chosen and ultimately paid.  I did pretty well, but there came a point where it just didn’t make much sense wasting time on projects that I wasn’t getting paid for.  I reached out to a few of the people that were using my designs and asked for referrals.  For many years to follow, I continued to work full-time in sales while doing design projects on the side as I could get them.

I eventually managed to learn enough to land a full-time job as a designer for a sign company where I got to sit in front of Corel all day and actually call myself a designer.  Being able to tell people I was a “Graphic Designer” was a really big deal to me.  It was a great sense of accomplishment and definitely a title that was I proud to announce when asked.

A few years later, the company I was working for conducted interviews with design firms for their re-branding.  Seeing these people come in, and knowing I was totally capable of doing exactly what they were going to do, made me extremely anxious and very upset with myself that I wasn’t living up to what I knew was my potential.  I think it was less than a week later that I abruptly quit and decided to take the risk at freelancing full-time.  I was living alone, and had a whole slew of bills every month that I was responsible for, but knew I had acquired the knowledge, naturally had the talent and definitely had the motivation to make this work, so I went for it.  Strictly designing logos wasn’t going to cut it and I knew that teaching myself web design to the point I was able to professionally offer it as a service was essential if I ever wanted to sustain a living.

A year later, here I am.  Business is inconsistent, but constantly getting better.  I am always stressed out at my workload and I work twice as much as I used to at my full-time job, only to barely make the same amount of money.  The difference is, I love every second it.  I am finally doing something I enjoy doing which removes every bit of what goes into the word “work.”  Work is no fun and the majority of our lives are spent doing it.  If I am going to spend so much of my time doing something, I need to love it or else I’d feel I was wasting my life.  I always refer back to the time when I had a “real job” because what I do now just doesn’t feel like work to me.  I am addicted to this stuff and almost feel like I am cheating somehow by being able to do it.  How many other people get to make a living in the same clothes they slept in the night before?

The biggest thing for me, though, is I have actually figured out a way to use the talents that I had back in high school.  I am an artist and I get to be one every day.  Never in a million years would I have thought there’d be a way for me to put any of that to use, but I have.  And even though I’m not rich and have a very long way to go before I am, I already consider myself successful because I am having a great time doing what I’m meant to be doing.

The whole process of learning every bit of what I know on my own makes all of this that much more enjoyable.  I am not one to say that college isn’t worth it, or that you shouldn’t go if you think you don’t have to.  All I know is that this is what worked best for me.  I am the type of person that will never hire someone to something I am able to do on my own.  Whether it’s replacing the brakes on my car, hanging drywall or learning design, as long as there are directions on how to do something, I never see any reason why I can’t or shouldn’t do it myself.

4. What are your favorite tools and/or plug-ins to use when working on a web design project?

Since working on projects for clients is sometimes restricting as far as what I am allowed to do, I like to do all my experimenting with the fun stuff on my personal site.

Right now, I have been really getting into JQuery.  The language is new to me, and nothing that I am able to write from scratch, but the possibilities that seem to exist with it really drive me to learn as much as I can about it.  I’ve definitely mastered the technique of finding something pre-built and modifying it to do what I want it to though, and this has proven to be a great way to start the learning process.

sIFR is something I recently have become familiar with and spent a good amount of time perfecting on my site.  Only being able to use a handful of boring fonts when designing really puts a damper on the creativity that could be possible. Even though methods like sIFR, Cufon and Facelift aren’t perfect and all have their pros and cons, it’s nice to see more options being worked on to help out an aspect of design that has really been left behind.

5. What do you think is the best thing that has happened to web design in the last 10 years?

Without a doubt the best thing to happen to web design in the last 10 years has been the designers themselves, more specifically, the amount of them.

I remember back when I first thought of freelancing full-time, I was turned off by how many designers there were and thought that the industry was flooded and there wasn’t any room for someone like me to be any sort of successful. However, what I thought would hold me back and hinder my growth actually turned out to be the best help for me.  Every single one of these designers serves as a source of inspiration and education.

With all of these CSS and logo galleries popping up over the past few years, it’s amazing to me just how many great designers there are out there.  The quality of work that exists drives me, and I know many others, to keep on improving and being creative.  It’s hard at times, because it seems that everything has been done already and there’s no chance of coming up with something new, but it’s impossible not to try.  Ultimately, the competition has made the world of design take on a life of its own.  It’s quickly and constantly evolving and keeping up is the fun part.  To think how far things have come in the past 10 years, only makes me wonder where things will be in the next 10.  There’s no way to even begin to speculate.  Maybe things will eventually plateau and level off, but I doubt it.  There are just too many people trying too hard to be too innovative.  If necessity is the mother of invention, competition is definitely its father.  We’ll just have to wait and see.