Spicy Web Designer Interview with Fred Yates

Fred Yates is a web designer from Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. He has been designing websites since 2002. After studying at the New England Institute of Art for 3 semesters in Interactive Media Design and began designing professionally after that. Even though he is only 22 years old web designer he is a very experienced and skilled designer working full-time.

1. How did you get started in web design?

When I got started in web design I was playing video games, specifically Counter-Strike 1.6 semi-professionally and being on a team without a website was the equivalent of not being on a team at all. To make it in the community you needed to appear professional and get a decent amount of exposure, a website helped this out a lot. At about the same time I had started dabbling in graphic design, influenced and helped by a good friend of mine Jeff Daley (http://eatyourguitar.org/luckyhole/). I decided to turn my novice design skills into a website for my team. It began with me taking pre-existing templates, dissecting them, rebuilding them, and turning them into something that fit my needs. Eventually I knew enough to start making my own sites from scratch and my knowledge and love for the industry has grown exponentially ever since.

2. When did you start designing websites?

I started around 2002 during my sophomore year of high school. My friends were all getting into graphic design, playing around with Photoshop and Illustrator and I was amazed at some of the things they were producing. Obviously, I wanted to ride the cool train with them and with their help quickly picked up Photoshop. Eventually my eye for design started to develop and before I knew it, my love for design was well on its way.

3. What are the biggest challenges that you face in web design currently?

I find sometimes it’s pretty hard to find inspiration under pressure (i.e. for a deadline or under strict guidelines). I’m lucky enough to have a job that understands I’m not going to produce earth shattering design every day and as long as the final product is a great piece of design, those off days fall by the wayside.

Obviously, as I’m sure anyone could agree with this answer. IE6 is just a huge pain. I’ve gotten relatively good at making my code work in it but only because of countless hours of frustration and anger. I’m sure anyone that’s got some significant design under their belt has wanted to throw their computer out the window because they couldn’t figure out a particular bug in IE6. Regardless of how good one can get at developing for IE6 compatibility, it’s always going to be some extra hours and never fun.

4. Do you code on any of your web design projects? And if so, do you consider yourself a “Front-End Coder”? Why or Why Not?

I code the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for all of my personal projects. For all of my projects at work I pretty much do the HTML and CSS then pass it off to my developers who take over with their amazing Ruby skills. I am most definitely a Front-End Coder. I had a knack for the little bit of programming I did in the past but it’s not my cup of tea. If I had my choice I’d never write another if/else statement in my life, but that’s not really a realistic option, hah. I definitely enjoy design way more than programming, while I do love turning my work into functioning HTML, I don’t enjoy back-end coding.

5. Where did you go to school and has it helped you become a better web designer?

I went to school for three semesters at The New England Institute of Art studying Interactive Media Design. This is a pretty sore subject for me, and I preach my feelings about it often. The school was great, the instructors were all very professional and knowledgeable but it just wasn’t worth the price tag. After the first semester I had established myself as the guy to go to when you needed help with a web or design project and even the instructors found themselves asking my opinion on certain things. I tutored for my final semester there but it wasn’t long before I realized I had the skills needed to become a full time, professional designer. My big stand on the subject is that you should really think for yourself when deciding about school. I absolutely abhor parents, guidance counselors, and high school teachers that pressure you to go to college. All too often I was being told by my honors classes teachers that I wouldn’t be able to succeed in life without a degree. They basically told me that my only option if I didn’t want to serve tables and bag groceries for the rest of my life was to major in some lucrative career. Frankly, this is unacceptable and I just feel everyone should think for them self and avoid too much outside influence when decided on school, or anything for that matter.

6. Since you first started how has the web design industry changed? Has it changed for the better? If so, how? If not, please explain?

Since I first started I think web design has definitely made huge improvements. CSS3 is very exciting, as is HTML5 if it ever makes it to our computers. The introduction of the JQuery library is one of my favorite advancements and even Adobe’s new Flex Builder is taking huge leaps in the right direction. The things I’ve seen my coworkers do with Ruby on Rails is phenomenal and I know similar is achievable with other languages. All of these tools are very empowering to us as web designers and not many of them were available 7 years ago when I started.

The industry has changed a few ways that I don’t really approve of though. First and foremost, I think the W3C needs to come together and find a way to enforce one rendering engine for all browsers. Cross browser compatibility is a term that shouldn’t even exist but all the big browsers seem to want to render layouts their own way. Worst of all, and probably needless to say, Internet Explorer and Microsoft’s awful Trident engine seriously needs to be dealt with, hopefully IE8 can stay true to its web standards promises. I’m aware of all the organizations and individual users that run still run ie6 and are not going to upgrade until there is no other option, but if we don’t try to start changing things now, it’ll just be even longer till anything gets done about it. We really need a universal rendering engine that everyone can agree to develop for.

7. What are your favorite tools to use when designing a website? Why are they your favorite tools?

I think I can safely say I use Photoshop and Textmate for every single site I design. I’ve grown very comfortable with both tools and since I love my profession so much, I love the tools I use most often. I’m starting to get into Flex, and I’m falling in love with it. I remember when it was coming out and I was in school my professor told me it was basically “Actionscripting for designers” and I can see what she meant by that now. It’s a blast. Tweetdeck (my twitter [ @fredyatesiv ]) is my favorite distraction and Parallels is my least favorite program because it means I’m opening Windows on my Mac and testing in Internet Explorer