Spicy Web Designer Interview with Adrian Restantia

Adrian Restantia is an interactive and graphic designer from Timisoara in Romania. He first started in the “online medium” back in 1999 while he was still in high school. Adrian studied at Tibiscus University where he earned a degree in Journalism and New Media Faculty. While he was in Journalism school, in his first year, he had an online media class and shortly thereafter he started learning about HTML and has been learning web design ever since.

1. How did you get started in web design?

I first interacted with the online medium back in 1999 when I was in high school. Later I attended the Journalism Faculty and in the first year I had a class about online media. That was the starting point. I began to think about creating websites and in the second year of faculty I found myself playing with Photoshop and learning basic HTML. It was hard at that point because I had no one to teach me what a layer is, what is vector image, what is a raster image, what do you need to have in mind when you are designing for web.

I always considered that the Internet is an important source of information and also for inspiration. So I began to browse the web …

2. When did you start designing websites?

In 2002 I started collaborating with another guy who was more experienced. I was his junior for one year and I’ve learned a lot about web architecture and design. This collaboration gave me the chance to build a small portfolio so I sent my resume to a web agency in my hometown. I thought that if I want to evolve I need a fulltime job. They hired me and from there it all began.

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

Any new project is a real challenge. If you put passion in what you are doing you will take all your projects like a very big thing.

On another side I think that one of the most important aspects that I face when designing a website is the reviews stage. Many of my customers are tempted to intervene in the creative process and most of the time they don’t come up with the best suggestions. I take as a big challenge the process of making the client understand the fact that the designer is the professional and his decisions have to be respected.

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?

First of all I’m a web designer. I do front-end development in a serious way just for 6 months and I don’t recommend myself yet as a developer yet.

I must say that I’ve realized one important thing and this is that if you do front-end development besides web design the quality and the workflow of your projects is considerably improved.

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

I’ve studied Journalism and I discovered web design when I was a student. I have no design degree or computer science degree but I have a big passion for all that is related to new media.

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?

I think that at this moment the web industry is like a child who has recently learned to say “mom”.

The standards are changing very fast. The quality of the sites is making big progress both on design and content development. If we will compare what we are having on the web now and what was on the web five years ago we will see a very big difference and in the same time we will realize that the direction toward the things are moving is a good one.

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

I use frequent the following applications:

Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, sometimes Adobe Flash, Corel Draw and recently I’ve started to use Aptana Studio for XHTML / CSS encoding.