James Martin from Helikopter Design continues to push the creative boundaries of web design

James J. Martin is a web designer and the creative force behind, Helikopter Design, a small web design studio that is based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States. He is a self-taught web designer who taught himself by reading and practicing with books on web design, CSS design, Web Standards and blogs and industry sites where he could challenge his skills and grow into a stronger web designer. He was a history major before switching gears and moving to web design. James has been designing websites professionally for about the past three years now and continues to love to learn new techniques improve on his skills.

1. James, I see that you are a self-taught web designer?  How did you original start to teach yourself about web design when you started?

Basically I read every book I could get my hands on. I had an O’Reilly book that pretty much covered all the basics then I started branching out into more specific stuff like “Designing With Web Standards” by Jeffrey Zeldman, “Then Zen of CSS Design” by Dave Shea and Molly Holzschlag, and “Web Standards Solutions” by Dan Cederholm. All of these books were hugely influential. I also read as many design blogs like Smashing Magazine and A List Apart as I could every day. Some of the stuff was a little beyond my scope at that point, but I continued to totally immerse myself in web design. I did as many Photoshop tutorials as I could find, as well. Even things I wasn’t necessarily interested in just so I could learn the interface. I’m definitely an autodidact. I bristle at being told what to study. I always think I know better than the instructor! Haha

2. What did you study in school and why did you eventually decide to become a web designer?

I was actually a history major in school. Not because of any practical reason for sure! My family had a company (not design related) that had been around for a few generations and that’s where I worked my whole life. Unfortunately the company ceased to exist a few years ago so I had to find something else to do! I had always been an artist as a kid, doing my own comic books and other creative projects. I also had been involved with music since my mid-teens. I was a drummer in a band that achieved a moderate level of success. We signed a record deal, toured all over the U.S. (I also played in Tokyo), the whole nine yards. Web design is just another path on that creative trip. I just became more and more fascinated by designing for the web the more I learned about it.

3. I see that you do front-end development and I want to know what are your favorite tools to use for front-end development?

The lines are becoming increasingly blurred between a “front-end developer” and a “designer”. Designers need to have a skill set that includes some JavaScript and PHP knowledge among other things. It’s tough to define those jobs exactly in black and white. Rarely is someone completely compartmentalized that they don’t deal with issues outside their “scope”.

As for tools, I mainly use Photoshop, Fireworks, and Dreamweaver. To be honest, I don’t use the full functionality of Dreamweaver. I could just as easily use a text editor.  Firebug is something I can’t live without. It’s an absolutely brilliant extension. I also use the ColorZilla and MeasureIt add-ons for Firefox.

4. How long have you been doing web design for professionally? How did you originally start designing websites?

I have been doing this for about three years. I originally started designing websites for people for nothing, just to get some experience with a real project. They would ask, “Can we do this?”, “Can we have this on the page?” and I would say “Sure, no problem “. Meanwhile, I had not a clue how to do it!! I bluffed, and then I would just figure out how to do what they wanted. That’s one way to learn how to do web design. Haha. I look back at some of my first sites and laugh at how rudimentary they were. It’s like seeing an old picture of you with a bad hairstyle or goofy outfit. What was I thinking? The important thing is to keep learning. Once you think you know it all, then you’re screwed. I’m not happy if I’m not learning a new technique or getting a new design idea every day.

5. How do you usually promote your web design business? Do you currently freelance? And if so, do you do this on a part-time basis or a full-time basis?

I try to promote my design business by getting my name out there, (Helikopter, of course!) submitting to design galleries, blogging, (which I don’t do enough of, to be honest), and doing interviews with fabulous websites like spicywebdesigners.com, (full-on plug in force). I am designing part-time now, but I expect to go full-time within 6-8 months. I’m getting a lot more inquiries than I can handle on a part-time basis right now.