Spicy Web Designer Interview with Jan Vantomme

Jan Vantomme is a web designer from Ghent, Belgium. He has been online since 1996 and fell in love with it from the start and began building websites in 1998. He originally started off studying Multimedia and Communication Technology but never finished and later on went back to school for Graphic Design in Ghent, Belgium. Aside from designing user interfaces and websites he also teaches at Sint-Lukas Brussels University College of Art and Design.

1. How did you first get started designing websites?

I got to know the internet somewhere in 1996 and I immediately liked it. I just knew I wanted to do something with the medium. I made my first website in 1998.

2. Where did you go to school and what did you study? Has this helped you in your career so far to date?

I studied Multimedia and Communication Technology (Kortrijk, Belgium) for one year but never finished it. This was the place where I learned about HTML 3.2, CSS and the basics of JavaScript. Later on I went to study Graphic Design in Ghent. I started my own studio about two and a half years ago. At this moment I’m teaching web design at Sint-Lukas Brussels University College of Art and Design. The course is about web standards, design techniques and the basics of navigation. So I guess learning about design and multimedia has really helped me to this day.

3. What are the top 3 tools you use when designing a website? Is there one web design tool that you couldn’t live without?

If there is one tool I can’t live without, it would be a text editor. My choice goes out to TextWrangler, BBEdit’s smaller brother. It’s free and fully scriptable with AppleScript. I’ve made my own set of scripts for TextWrangler to edit XHTML and CSS in an easy way. A while ago I’ve switched to CSSEdit for editing my style sheets. It is a nice piece of Belgian software and a lot better than the CSS-scripts I wrote. CSSEdit features a built-in browser where you can see a live preview of your website. The third tool would be Photoshop. It’s simply the best image editor around for designing websites. I’ve been using this application since version 3.0 and I almost never used any other image editor.

4. What is the most challenging obstacle you’ve faced?

One of the biggest projects I’ve done was an in-house job at a previous employer. I made a web application where people could design their own vinyl stickers and order them online. The application however never made it online. I’ve learned a lot about PHP, Apache and MySQL on this job.

5. Have you received any design awards or special acknowledgments for the websites you’ve built?

I didn’t enter any of my projects to a web design competition or award show because most of them focus on eyecandy, not on content. Most of my projects are content-based and made with web standards. The website I made for De Verdwaalde Ooievaar (http://www.deverdwaaldeooievaar.be/) was an item on television news the day it was launched and got a few full page articles in the Belgian newspapers. Things like this are more important to me than awards.

6. How do you price the web design work that you do?

Depends who the client is. I work with a few non-profit organizations who have a tight budget so I work a little cheaper for them. Big companies and government organizations usually have a bigger budget to spend so they pay the full price.

7. Do you usually work with web designers when you are brought in on other web design projects?

I’ll try to handle most of my projects myself. When I really need to work with other people, I’ll try to bring in other designers myself. Usually these are friends or designers I’ve worked with before. I did a few great projects with Lander Janssens, a former student of mine who works as a freelance web designer.