Spicy Web Designer Interview with Gavin Hall

Gavin Hall is a web designer from Prague in the Czech Republic. He has over 11 years experience designing websites and consulting on a wide range of projects. Even though he holds British nationality he lives and works on Prague, Dubai and London. Gavin works with a wide range of tools in his web design projects from CodeIgniter which allows him to do rapid prototyping, the iPhone SDK and other CMS platforms including WordPress, ExpressionEngine and TextPattern. Even though he originally started off studying architecture at school he has worked to become a very talented and skilled web designer.

1. How did you get started in web design?

Entirely by fortune, as I had little interest in computers and digital design before studying architecture. Part of my degree involved the use of challenging 3D design programs such as AutoCAD and Lightwave.

When not composing horrific building designs, I quickly grew addicted to photoshopping imagery together and found the screen medium limiting in a very positive way. It allowed me to express some degree of creativity within certain bounds of usability and common sense. A combination that appealed to me in other platforms of public design, including architecture.

The availability of learning information was much less back then, but the personal authorship aspect of the web was kicking off at that point and it was a good choice.

2. When did you start designing websites?

Around 11 years ago i landed my first position with a small but growing online travel agency and was briefed to create a full CMS, booking system, and a series of digital brands. Learning on the job was a hugely important factor.

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

I find less challenges in front of me these days simply due to knowledge gained and some perspective on trends that I wish I had earlier on.

There are continual points in a web career where you must, for the sake of time alone, take an allegiance to particular trends, languages, visual patterns, platforms etc. Finding a route through these means missing out on other areas. I regret not learning object-oriented programming early on, as its fundamentally changed my view of a web page and the DOM.

4. Why do you refer to yourself as a Front-end developer over calling yourself a web designer?  Is it a way to brand yourself to your clients?

Ah yes, the title. I’ve changed my title a few times over the years and it didn’t make a damn bit of difference…

5. Where did you go to school and has it helped you become a better web designer/front-end developer?

School played little influence on my career in design other than access as mentioned above. I think you need to accept the continual learning process of a web designer or you won’t keep up and your value diminishes. There is a longevity bonus that comes with experience as with any career, but the web’s attention moves quickly towards new common denominators and your work must meet these, as with the new Social web.

I’ve never taken a course so I don’t know what the typical standards of teaching are like, but I see a difficulty in the need for a continual adaptation of the curriculum with the web.

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?

It gets better and better for me. I now have more tools, at a lower cost, to allow me to do my work more efficiently and at a higher standard than ever.

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

I’m all Mac these days and all the better for it.

I use MAMP as a local host, PhotoShop to layout, Pages to write the copy, TextMate to code and a load of browsers to test in. Usually in that order.

8. Being that you have a great deal of experience working on many larger scale projects what advice would you give to web designers starting out?

I think the two best snippets of advice I’ve taken to heart were to first understand and accept the client relationship early on for the sake of sanity, and secondly to find influence outside of the norm for the sake of creativity.

9. Besides the design that you do for the web i also see that you work with a wide range of application software for the web.  What is your favorite platform and why? Have you built any applications or plug ins that we may not be aware of?

For rapidly prototyping apps i use CodeIgniter, for content-heavy sites i use WordPress, TextPattern or ExpressionEngine and for static sites I hand code. They all offer well written markup, flexible yet clean templating, and efficient server-side structure plus they are properly documented online.

Im addicted to the iPhone SDK and am shortly releasing a couple of applications to the App Store.