Peter Kawecki is the self-actualized “international man of mystery” behind Bapple.com.au. He is a character and the web design he produces with the help of web developers stands alone as a good alternative. He is based in Sydney Australia. He’s been designing websites since 1995 and enjoys hitting the waves when he is not working on Bapple.

1. How did you first get started in Web Design?

Weirdly enough I had no interest in the web when it first surfaced in the mainstream. I had mates making crude websites before I did back in 95 when it was still 14400bit dialup but eventually I took a liking to interface & multimedia design at University and that lead me to the net. I taught myself mostly and the rest is history.

2. How do you generate most of your new clients when it comes to web design?

Mostly its word of mouth, but lately the mighty Google hath bestowed me with a few good clients.

3. Who makes up the Bapple team? Is it just yourself or do you have a few other designers or programmers working with you?

Officially it’s a solo operation but I constantly rely on a few awesome developers that painfully piece together my designs for me, I say that because it’s always a very back & forward process along the lines of “Could you move those 2 pixels that way and what happened to the other 4 pages in the design”, that kind of thing. Coders generally have no concept of accurate design (not all, I love you Ben and Dave : )) layout but they are freaking awesome at coding things quickly & efficiently so I really rely on them.

4. Does your company usually take on new freelance Web Designers? How do you go about finding the web designers that work for you?

Not so much designers as coders; I love my coders they do all the nasty CSS and browser compatibility, I can do it myself but I loathe it, rather be designing. Generally I find freelancers on forums and other freelance directories.

5. Do you currently do any Search Engine Optimization development for your clients? Or is your company’s focus more on design and style?

I prefer to make things look pretty rather than getting bogged down in techy land, but I do the basics like keywords, Meta tags etc.

6. Do more of your web design clients go for designs that do not involve Flash because it is not search engine friendly? If so how do you deal with people who don’t like Flash because of the stigma associated to it and search engines?

These days it isn’t so much an issue because there are tricks you can do to make your flash content searchable but saying that only certain sites lend themselves to the full flash treatment and it’s usually catalogues and creative/alternative sites. A lot of my clients are happy with a flash hybrid site consisting of nice flashy bits with searchable html content.

7. What are your hours of operation and does your company work weekends?

I’m pretty lax with my hours, one thing that motivates me though is surfing in the afternoon before it gets dark, so usually I work between 9 & 7 but if surfs up I try to get out by 4-5

8. Where do you get the inspiration when designing new website projects?

I usually look into the nature of the product/service the client is providing and draw associations from that, such as the piano site I did recently which I subtly shaped like the curve of a grand piano, ‘Google images’ is also a great tool for finding weird related images quickly but otherwise I just experiment and draw a lot until I come up with something that works.

9. What kind of pricing can new clients expect? And, are you currently taking on new clients?

Well.. Usually $543,000 will get you a basic MySpace template but lately I’ve been underselling myself.. hehe, no, you can get a pretty flashy website these days for a couple thousand dollars and it will take 3-4 days to create.

10. Do you allow clients to walk into your offices and meet face to face with you?

If I had an office I would let them walk into it, but my bedroom doesn’t really look as pro as I would like, : ) That’s the next step. Usually a cafe or their office does the trick.

More about this Web Designer

URL: Bapple.com.au

Email/Contact: hello@bapple.com.au

Phone: (02)9665 6093
Mobile: 0419144829

Address: 18/15 Byron St, Coogee
NSW, AUSTRALIA