Spicy Web Designer Interview with Aarron Walter

Aarron Walter is a Web Designer, Developer, Author and Teacher from Atlanta, Georgia in the United States of America. Originally, Aarron did not set out to become a web designer and started off painting and then later moved into learning Macromedia Director and Lingo. He started to first design sites in the late 1990’s. Now a days, he is speaking at an Event Apart 2009 and recently published “Building Findable Websites: Web Standards SEO and Beyond” in 2008. He currently teaches at the Art Institute of Atlanta in the Interactive Media Design Faculty and has done so since 2001.

1. How did you originally get into web design?

Like so many early adopters of our craft, I didn’t set out to become a web designer. I studied painting in undergrad and grad school. I had high aspirations of conquering the art world, and only stumbled upon web design when trying to solve some aesthetic problems in my studio. I started to use Photoshop as a way to quickly iterate through composition concepts for my paintings, and quickly became more enchanted with the digital renderings than the paintings themselves. I wanted to bring my digital images to life, so I took a class in the Graphic Design department that taught me how to use Macromedia (now Adobe) Director and Lingo. I was surprised to find out that I absolutely loved code. It’s so empirical, functional, logical, definitive, and practical. It’s the opposite of painting. With Director I could flex both hemispheres of my brain – the creative, illogical side and the logical computational side. I was hooked.

The progression from CD-ROMs to the Web was natural. CD-ROMs provided rich media design opportunities, but could reach so few people, so I tried very clumsily to move my ideas to a website. Though the execution was rough, the ideas were good enough to land me a job at an agency in Philadelphia where I got to work on project for David Bowie, Barnes and Noble, Universal Studios, and some other cool clients.

2. When did you design your first website?

I designed a bunch of small experimental sites in the late 1990′s, but my first “real” site was Liveonnoevil.com (now someone has sadly turned that URL into a link farm). It was a true design and technology playground where I experimented with narratives, and interface concepts. I photographed found objects and incorporated them into my designs. Sometimes it didn’t always make a lot of sense, but that’s what I really enjoyed about it. I had the freedom to fail. It took a lot of time to maintain so around 2002 I put it to rest.

I think one thing we as web designers could learn from the early days of the Web is that despite the crappy construction, inaccessibility, and oblivion to standards that was so common then, there was a great deal of interesting experimentation going on that I believe is not as present today. We were actively trying to push the bounds of our technologies to create impractical, create art experiences. To some degree that spirit lives on in the Flash community, but we in the standards camp are in the equivalent of our post-high school days where we are trying our best to be responsible, productive adults that have no need for frivolous play. I wonder if as our medium matures can we find a healthy balance?

3. I see that you are an author as well as a designer, developer and teacher.  How has writing about web design and development helped you build contacts in the web design industry?

I published Building Findable Websites: Web Standards SEO and Beyond [http://tinyurl.com/796gkm] with New Riders in February of 2008. As I was writing the book I had to contact a lot of prominent folks in our industry to obtain permission to include their work, which sparked conversations and forged some important relationships. Jonathan Snook [http://snook.ca] did the technical editing on my book, which was a joy as I’ve admired his work for some time. Jeffrey Zeldman and Peter Morville reviewed my book while it was still in production, and provided glowing endorsements which have encouraged readers to connect with it. After my book was published Jeffrey and Eric Meyer invited me to speak at An Event Apart in New Orleans, which in turn afforded me the opportunity to meet even more top folks in our field. I’ll be speaking at An Event Apart again in 2009 – one in Seattle [http://aneventapart.com/2009/seattle/] and one in Boston [http://aneventapart.com/2009/boston/]. I hope to speak with some of your readers there.

But, you don’t have to write a book to build contacts with people. While teaching I invited a number of top industry people to speak to my classes including Todd Dominey [http://slideshowpro.net/], Rob Weychert [http://robweychert.com/], Jonathan Snook [http://snook.ca], Mark Boulton [http://www.markboultondesign.com/], Shaun Inman [http://shauninman.com], and Robert Hoekman [http://rhjr.net/]. I also make a point of attending South By Southwest Interactive [http://sxsw.com/interactive] each year in Austin, TX, which has become the Mecca for our craft. At SxSW you can easily meet and have drinks with your web design heroes, or connect with likeminded folks with whom you can collaborate on project.

4. What are some of the articles that you’ve written (feel free to provide links if they are online)?

I published an article on A List Apart [http://alistapart.com] last year entitled “Findability, Orphan of the Web Design Industry” [http://www.alistapart.com/articles/findabilityorphan] and I have another one on the way soon that will discuss the crisis in the education of Web professionals. I wrote an article for SitePoint [http://sitepoint.com] a while back entitled “Use Ajax and PHP to Build Your Mailing List” [http://www.sitepoint.com/article/use-ajax-php-build-mailing-list/]. I’ve also written a few articles for PeachPit.com [http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1193475] [http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1245331], and DMXZone [http://www.dmxzone.com/ShowDetail.asp?NewsId=12757].

Writing articles is a lot of fun, as it gives you the opportunity to clarify and share your ideas which can be helpful to a lot of readers. Often people are a little shy about sharing on such a broad scale, but publishing is actually pretty easy. There are lots of great publications like Digital Web [http://digital-web.com], SitePoint [http://sitepoint.com], and others that are always on the look out for new writers.

5. What are some of the biggest challenges that you personally face when it comes to web design?

Right now it’s exceptionally frustrating that we still have to support IE6 when building new websites. Although it was released before 9/11, there are still a huge number of people using it because they don’t know how to upgrade, or are unable to upgrade because their IT department won’t let them. IE6 significantly limits design possibilities. There are, of course, a plethora of strategies to circumvent the problem, but I resent that I have to devote a significant portion of time remediating my sites for a nearly 10 year old browser. Luckily, IE8 has made great strides to provide web designers many of the tools already in Firefox, Safari, and Opera.

6. I see on your site that you teach at Art Institute of Atlanta.  How did you first start teaching?  Do you love it and if so why? And, what courses do you teach?

I taught full time at The Art Institute of Atlanta in the Web Design and Interactive Media department from 2001 to the end of 2007. In January of 2008 I left my full time position there to join The Rocket Science Group as the lead user experience designer on MailChimp. I still teach a couple of courses adjust at The Art Institute because I love teaching. In the spring of 2008 I taught a course called “Findability”, which was the inspiration for my book, and in the fall of the same year I taught History of Communication Media, a theory course in which we explore how we evolve with our media.

Teaching is not an easy job, but it’s so important and certainly rewarding. It requires that you not only know your subject, but that you know it well enough to break down core principles into a series of lessons that span an entire academic term, all while keeping the big picture clear to your students. I feel like I learn as much as my students do with each course I teach.

I’m also currently heading up an educational project for The Web Standards Project called The WaSP Curriculum Framework. We’re developing a curriculum designed to help colleges around the world teach best practices in front-end development, design, user sciences, server-side development, professional practices, and foundations. We”l be releasing out curriculum in March of 2009 at SxSW.

7. What are some web technologies you could not live without?

I’m not sure I could narrow things down to provide a digestible list. I spend a huge amount of time writing CSS and markup. I use wikis a lot in my work with WaSP and prepping for speaking at conferences. I particularly like PBWiki. I am a big fan of jQuery for its power, simplicity, and elegance. It makes JavaScript work much faster. Like many web designers, I use Magnolia to keep track of my bookmarks, Flickr to organize photos, Pandora to stay entertained, Twitter to stay in touch, and I regularly neglect my WordPress blog.