Web Design Inspiration Blog | SpicyWebDesigners.com

Josh Byers is a pretty busy web developer these days working for Copyblogger Media and StudioPress as one of their key theme designers not including the blogging he does at ByersHome.com and his work at Red Letters Studio.  He has spent a lot of time working with WordPress, web design and Genesis framework to develop some amazing websites.  Needless to say Josh is a busy guy these days.

Josh has been nice enough to share some of his experiences working with WordPress (he’s been working with it since 2005), his views on designing websites that work on all devices and his own personal recommendations for people looking at building websites for their business needs.  With that I give you Josh Byers…

1. Josh, with your success in the web development community, what has been the key to some of your success?

I think it really is having a passion for what I do.  I really enjoy web development and so to work on it isn’t a chore but rather a privilege.  That translates into working more and having a more targeted focus.  I’ve also been very lucky to build some good relationships that have got me recognized by key people.

2. What do you recommend to people that are looking at building a website for their business? And what are some key things that people really need to look at when considering a website for their business, in your opinion?

You have to know your audience and what content they need.  It makes no sense to put all this stuff online that you care about but your customers don’t.  Make sure your business website is viewable and useable from a mobile device – I can’t stress that enough.

3. You are pretty heavily involved in WordPress development from your personal blog to your work at RedLetters Studio and working in the team at StudioPress.  Why WordPress? And what do you recommend in terms of plugins and themes/theme frameworks to use on projects?

I’ve been working with WordPress since 2005.  I was looking for a content management system that was easy to use but would allow me to build sites the way I wanted to build them.  I’m very particular in some cases and the system I’m using needs to be flexible.

I would obviously recommend Genesis as a WordPress framework – and not just because I work for StudioPress.  I used Genesis exclusively on all my projects before I was hired by StudioPress.  In my opinion it takes care of everything a developer doesn’t want to spend a lot of time on like seo, menus, custom widgets and really lets you design and build the site you want.

When it comes to plugins there probably isn’t any that I would blanket recommend everyone have because each site has different needs.  I would say if you are going to use a plugin check out the ratings, comments and development history of the plugin.  One of the most common ways sites get hacked is from out of date and poorly coded plugins.

4. How did you get started developing websites? Is it something you always were involved with? Or did you make a change out of an original career?

I’ve been interested in the web since I got my first hotmail email address back in 1996.  I tried develop a site for an a cappella group I was a part of with Front Page but didn’t realize I needed a web host.  Needless to say I was a little confused when nobody else could see the site.

Web design was never something I intended to make a career out of – I just enjoyed it.  I built sites for my friends, my church and others.  When people started to offer to pay me to build them a site was when I first thought I could do this for a living.

5. How do you think that the mobile/tablet PC revolution that is currently underway is changing the world of web design?  What do you recommend to people to make their website more “responsive” in nature so that it renders on most devices?

Mobile isn’t the future as some would say – It’s here now and if your site isn’t optimized for mobile devices you’re either annoying your audience or they are tuning into another site.

For developers I would recommend reading Ethan Marcote’s book – Responsive Web Design.  It lays out the groundwork for making a site responsive and it’s really not that hard.

Feel free to read some of Josh’s recent articles on the StudioPress blog including…

• CSS3 is for today
• How to Make Your Website Respond to Different Mobile Devices
• Mobile Responsive Design: The Flexible Grid 
• The Secret to Confidence with Color Design

Check out some of Josh Byers work below…

24K free Child WordPress Theme for Genesis

RedLetters Studio

Josh Byers Personal Blog - ByersHome.com

Coming to SpicyWebDesigners.com all the way from Spain is Bruno Felicio, a web and graphic designer from Madrid, Spain.  He has been designing for the past 10 years and when he first started he was originally a graphic design who made the move to web and multimedia 6 years ago and since then he has created some very impactful design work online.

Bruno doesn’t choose to design for just one CMS but his favourites are WordPress and Expression Engine to work with.  I hope enjoy reading more about this talented Spanish web designer.

Luc asks: How long have you been designing websites professionally?

Bruno says: I have been designing for about 10 years. I’ve started as a graphic designer and then moved on to the digital world of the web and multimedia content about 6 years ago.

Luc asks: Do you have a specific platform that you prefer to create for like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc?

Bruno says: I try not to have a preferred platform. As a CMS choice I prefer WordPress and EE (Expression Engine. I also love the idea of having custom built CMS (Content Management System) when need ’cause it gives you a lot of creativity freedom.

Luc asks: Do you prefer to do the graphic layout aspects on a project or the coding?

Bruno says: I love to design and I also love to create. I always design with the code in mind and the other way around can also be true sometimes. Don’t really have a preference because I love doing both. I love making pixel perfect apps and websites with colors and graphics that capture your attention but I also love the coding part that it is connect to the UX. Bringing great design and user centred coding together makes great user experience, and that’s what I try to achieve at the end of the day: quality user experience.

Luc asks: Your style of design is very creative and playful.  Did you hone this in school and what kinds of things inspire you to create this way?

Bruno says: I try to get the most of me in every project that I work on. I think the inspiration can come from anywhere really. From a book, a song, weather. All that is around me serves as an inspiration. Obviously the biggest inspiration is the web itself. I always try to keep up with some of the global trends.

Luc asks: Do you think it’s important to go to University or College to become a good designer?  Did you have any inclination before you got into web design to do any other type of design work?

Bruno says: A good education is an important ground base for every professional. A designer should know the fundamentals, if someone taught him better, if not than he will have to learn it by himself. All the professions have rules but of course those rules can bend towards the creativity of the professional. I’ve always new I had to do something related to art so design was my first choice when entering into college.

Jason Long is a front-end developer and UI designer from Columbus, Ohio from the United States.  He currently runs Black Ant Media, his freelance web development company.  Jason has been freelancing since 2005 on a full-time basis.

He has been working with websites since 1996 and with over 15 years designing and developing for the web Jason has learned a great deal about the web.  During our interview, Jason talked about his use of HTML5 and CSS3 in his work, how he balances his family as he works from home with freelancing and more about his personal experiences in web development so I hope that you enjoy getting to know Jason Long.

Luc asks: In your portfolio you mention that you graduated from Computer Science at Ohio State University.  Would you consider yourself more of a web designer with the emphasis on “design” of a web developer?

Jason says: A few years ago, I would have said that I was a developer with a strong interest in design. Nowadays, I say that I’m a designer and front-end developer. There used to be a sharper line between designers and developers, but now there is a (growing) grey area in between with things like JavaScript, CSS effects, and HTML5 features (canvas, geolocation, local storage, etc.). Much of this is more technical than some designers are comfortable with and at the same time, it’s closer to the front-end than a lot of developers like to be. This grey area is my sweet spot.

Luc asks: How long have you been professionally designing for the web?

Jason says: I think the first time I ever got paid for web work was in 1996 at my first job after college. I started off with a traditional IT consulting company and I worked on our intranet while I was on the bench. I started working for a company called MindLeaders in 1999 and began doing web development in earnest – mostly ASP and JSP. Around the same time, I got involved in a small e-commerce site for hotrod car parts and I cut my teeth on PHP, CSS, and semantic HTML. I’ve been an independent developer/designer since 2005.

Luc asks: Do you do freelance web design on a full-time or a part-time basis currently?  If you are a part-time freelance designer where do you work and what do you do for a “day job”?

Jason says: I went out on my own in 2005 and this has been my full-time gig ever since.

Luc asks: I noticed that your portfolio is coded using HTML5 and CSS3, both of which are fairly new to the world of the web.  How have you found working with these technologies and what technical tips do you have for designers who are using these standards for the first time?

Jason says: in truth, I’m not utilizing much from the HTML5 spec on my site. I have tried to incorporate some of the newer semantic elements like header, footer, nav, and section. I have used quite a bit of CSS3 though. Most designers know about border-radius, text-shadow, and box-shadow, but subtle uses of -webkit-transitions (for gradual color changes on hover) and -webkit-transforms (for slight photo rotations) are a nice way to add a little something to your designs while not being a big deal if some people miss out on them.

There are a lot of nifty things that can be done with the new CSS effects, but since they are limited to specific browsers (mostly those based on WebKit) for now, it’s important to have contingencies for your designs so that they don’t rely on those browsers. On my contact form, for example, I’m using Modernizr to detect whether or not the user’s browser support 3D transforms. If they do, they see the contact form flip around when they submit it and turn into an envelope. Otherwise, I fall back to simpler cross-fade effect via JavaScript.

My best advice for designers would be to not shy away from the technical side of web design (and to me, design is how something works, not just how it looks). If you’ve never done any JavaScript work, roll your sleeves up and play with jQuery. If you’re already familiar with jQuery, try out another framework (like MooTools) or take a step back and learn about pure JavaScript. If you haven’t looked at Sass or Less, check them out. Having some technical chops to go along with your Photoshop-fu will make you dramatically more attractive to people looking to staff exciting new projects.

Luc asks: What are some of your favourite features of working with HTML5 and CSS3 and how have you applied them to your work?

Jason asks: I’m about to dig in deeper into HTML5 canvases on a current project and I’m very excited about that. Geolocation and local storage also open up huge new opportunities, especially in the mobile space. I’m using HTML5 for all of my new projects, even if that means just using the new doctype. Like most designers, I’ve been quietly injecting CSS3 bits into projects for a while now – a rounded corner here, a drop shadow there.

I’ve been playing with Sass recently and it has really made writing CSS more enjoyable. It allows you to take advantage of some traditional programming concepts like functions (mixins in Sass) and variables (so you don’t have to repeat that hex code for that blue 37 times). It also provides some nice mathematical HSL methods for color manipulation. This means you can do things like create great-looking buttons (including hover and active states) with a single base color. Sass methods like lighten, darken, desaturate, hue, complement, etc. allow you to compute colors for gradients, border colors, and shadows from that base color. If you have a few different buttons on your site, you can wrap that recipe in a mixin and use it over and over with any base color.

As a simple example, you can look at the Sass code for the green button on my contact form by clicking here!

Luc asks: What was the most recent book, magazine article or blog article that you read and loved?

Jason says: Overall, “Born to Run” is probably the most interesting book I’ve read over the last year or so. For something web-related, Andy Clarke’s “Hardboiled Web Design” is outstanding.

I just subscribed to .net magazine (which is called Practical Web Design in the U.S.). I remember this magazine being chock full of awful Dreamweaver tutorials and the like, but they now have great coverage of HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. The most recent issue has a great article by Ryan Florence on creating a MooTools slideshow class.

Luc asks: How do you manage a career in freelance design, a family and yourself on a daily basis?

Jason says: I work out of my home, but I’m very strict about balancing my work and family life. I run before work a few times a week and almost always stop working at 5:00. After that, its family time and I rarely answer work phone calls or emails. I want to kick ass at work and be a great husband and dad and that can’t happen unless you compartmentalize those roles.

Jone Eide is a web developer and the Chief Technology Officer of OneStepCheckout, a product that allows you to optimize the checkout process of Magento ecommerce websites.  He currently lives in Norway in the Oslo area and he has become a big collaborator, working with SilverThemes, a Magento theme company on some projects for Magento.  He has over a decade of web development experience which started by learning HTML and he has since gone into working with SEO, web frameworks and his current focus is ecommerce.

You’ve heard me talk about the benefits of the OneStepCheckout product before in a product review I did on the OneStepCheckout solution however I had a chance to ask Jone about his experiences developing so that you could get to know a little more about the man behind the product.  I hope that you enjoy this interview with Jone.

Luc asks: When did you first start developing for the web?

Jone says: I started with simple web development using PHP and MySQL around 10 years ago (I was 16 at the time). I knew some basic HTML when starting and developed my skills pretty much off online resources. After a few years I started doing freelance gigs, and after several years with that I got interested in SEO and web frameworks. Now only in the recent couple of years I’ve been interested in ecommerce.

Luc asks: I see that you are also involved with SilverThemes as their lead developer.  How has that experience made you a more “well rounded” web developer?

Jone says:  For SilverThemes I have created a few modules, which helped me get into the habit of writing Magento modules, so I am very happy for the experience I’ve had here. I have in the recent time not been able to spend too much time with Silverthemes.

Luc asks: What spurred you on to create OneStepCheckout?  Where did the idea come from and where do you see OneStepCheckout going?

Jone says: A few years ago I started an online store with my wife, selling female clothing. We got into Magento and decided to use it. After several months of being online with the store and monitoring analytics, we noticed that too many people dropped off in the checkout process. We also received multiple phone calls from customers that were having issues with completing the purchase, because of different errors (weird IE issues with the JavaScript behind the default Magento checkout).

As a simple alternative I hacked together a (somewhat) working alternative checkout that I placed directly in the cart page. We noticed our conversions increased, and were happy about the result. As the months passed I paid attention to the Magento Connect ecosystem and thought other store owners also might be interested in such a solution. After giving it some thought, I went looking for partners to do this project with, and found a great co-founder that could handle the marketing and sales side of things. We spent a couple of months building our website and polishing the product before releasing it, and the feedback from our customers has been fantastic! We are now at around 3000 installations, and the number keeps growing every day.

Our goal for OneStepCheckout is to become the provider of checkout related products for Magento. Some would say we already are, but we have big plans for the future. Of course this includes continually improving our product, but also releasing new products that is related to the checkout process. The first product we are about to launch is called CheckoutLookup, and is a solution for doing automatic address lookups based on country and postcode, to help customers enter their address details both faster and more reliable.

Luc asks: Why did you decide to develop OneStepCheckout for Magento and not other ecommerce platforms?  Are there any plans to develop OSC for other platforms?

Jone says: In the ecommerce space, Magento is the only hot topic these days. The growth has been explosive, and all other ecommerce solutions we know of don’t even come close.  OSCommerce might come close with regards to installations, but the platform is really hard to work with, and the structure of it can’t even compare to Magento. Some say Magento is overly complicated, and in some cases that is true, but it gives an extreme flexibility regarding both custom development and design.

We are continually discussing implementing it for other platforms, but we have no specific plans to this date.

Luc asks: Why should someone buy OSC to optimize their ecommerce website over another ecommerce solution?

Jone says: Well first we don’t like to down-talk our competitors, so I will not say a negative word about them. But our customers get the guarantee that comes with a product that has over 3000 installations. Our module is proven and rock-solid, and has been tested in all possible combinations of payment / shipping methods and everything else. We have long experience with supporting our product, and have dedicated staff that work full time with OneStepCheckout only. Our business is only around the checkout, so we don’t spend any time working on anything else. Most of our competitors have a lot of other products to support as well, so they probably can’t dedicate as much as we can.

Luc asks: What don’t we know about you that people might interest people?

Jone says: Now this is a tough one! – Technically I have been very interested in the SEO space and have had great results with search engines in the past. For the clothing store I mentioned earlier, we were the #1 result in Google for the best keywords related to the business. Also, I live for standards-compliant code, and think all mark-up should be written by hand I am also a big fan of open standards, open source and HTML5.

On the non-technical side, I am a former Norwegian champion in the sport of table tennis, and currently I also play a lot of Disk Golf

Cristian Antohe is a web developer from Romania and the guy behind CozmosLabs, a blog about WordPress Theme development. His has developed a number of Child themes for the Thematic Theme framework in WordPress and has also recently released his first Genesis Theme Framework child theme called “Charisma”.  Cristian has been developing for and using WordPress for the past 2 and a half years and loves working with the platform.

He considers himself both a web designer working on the creative aspects of website and he considers himself a web developer coding functionality into the websites that he creates but favours the creative UI Design aspects of projects that he works on these days.

Cristian Antohe was nice enough to do with SpicyWebDesigners.com where he talks about how he started learning WordPress, his passion for designing great websites and a sneak peek at what he is working on next!

Luc asks: How did you first get involved in designing and developing for WordPress?

Cristian says: Two and a half years ago I started Cozmoslabs.com as a place to share and communicate with people interested in the wonderful world of web-design and development. Setting up that blog was my first real experience with WordPress. Over a couple of months of playing with WordPress I got hooked. Also in the same period I’ve started a small web-design shop in Romania together with my colleague Adrian Spiac. We needed a CMS for our clients and WordPress seamed the right choice.

Luc asks: Do you consider yourself a developer or designer?

Cristian says: I would say a little bit of both. Web-designer would be a good fit since 90% of the work I do is for the web. In the last year or so I focused more on UI design because I like it and also my colleague Madalin Ungureanu dose the heavy lifting nowadays when it comes to development.

Luc asks:  Running CozmosLabs, I see that you develop for a number of WordPress Theme Frameworks including Thematic and StudioPress‘ Genesis Theme Framework.  Do you have any plans to develop your own theme framework?  Why did you choose to develop child themes for these two Theme Frameworks in particular?

Cristian says: Another theme framework? Definitely not! I came to the conclusion that in order to create a Swish Knife type of framework you simply have to add more and more functionality and that leads to so much complexity that’s just not worth it. Lately I’ve come to agree with Justin Tadlock’s point of view regarding frameworks and I’ve experimented with Hybrid Core.

This doesn’t mean I won’t develop child themes for theme frameworks. Just that I won’t develop child themes where the design requires me to rewrite all the loops, post footers, etc.

As far as Thematic goes, that was my first Theme I played with beside Kubrick. Two years ago Thematic was the only real Theme Framework that encouraged child theme developers. You could say I fell in love with its HTML and CSS that made it so easy to create pretty much any layout without touching the templates. Since then, even if I wouldn’t develop a project for WordPress I would still use the same base HTML and CSS Thematic uses. It’s that good.

Genesis was more or less an experiment. The child theme featured on Cozmoslabs is the only one I’ve made for it. I wanted to test another WordPress theme framework beside Thematic and I was pleasantly surprised about it, however it never caught on with me.

Luc asks:  What are your 5 favourite WordPress plugins to use?

Cristian says: I would say that my favorite WordPress Plugins are Gravity Forms, WordPress.com Stats, Akismet, Widget Logic and Regenerate Thumbnails.

Luc asks:  Is there anything special you are working on these days?  Can we get a sneak peek?

Cristian says: Actually yes. We currently working on an in-house project called “QandaPress“, a question and answer platform built on top of WordPress. This will be self-hosted and subscription based. It’s aimed to larger publishers that want to engage with their users. I don’t have any more details about it now because it’s in the early days of product development and we don’t know exactly how’s going to turn out.

Check out some of the themes that CozmosLabs has developed including the following…

Smarter WordPress Theme

Early Morning WordPress Theme

Byty WordPress Theme

Jonathan Davis is a web developer from Dayton, Ohio in the United States.  He currently runs his own web development company called Ingenesis Ltd. the company responsible for the Shopp eCommerce WordPress plugin that allows you to turn your WordPress CMS system into an ecommerce website.

Jonathan first got involved designing and developing website back in 1996.  Since then a lot has changed but his passion for the web has remained.  I had the chance to ask him about how his idea for Shopp became a reality, how Jonathan first started in web development and some lesser known things about him.

If you want to read more about the Shopp ecommerce plugin for WordPress that Jonathan Davis created please click here to read our review of Shopp.

Luc asks: Jonathan, when did you develop your first website and how long have you been designing for the web professionally?

Jonathan says: Wow, lemmie think about that… I guess it was back in 1996 so around 14 years ago I did a company website for the ISP I was working for. I think I started it in Adobe PageMill, a long dead WYSIWYG tool. I kept running into limitations, so I jumped to learning HTML back when we did table-based layouts. That was a crazy long time ago.

Luc asks:  How did you come up with the idea for the Shopp ecommerce Plugin for WordPress?  Why did you develop this plug-in for WordPress specifically?

Jonathan says:  I had been doing freelance website design and development consulting for about 3 years completely solo and had a client looking to do a rather ambitious marketing site with e-commerce capability.

Since early 2005 I had been using WordPress as the content management framework for all my projects and knew it would be a perfect fit for managing the marketing content of the site. But when I started to look at the available e-commerce solutions I was really frustrated.

The most mature solution at the time just didn’t have the customization capability that WordPress natively offered. The code was a mess and it would have taken more time to hack it to work not to mention locking out any possibility of an easy upgrade.

It seemed the only logical thing to do was to roll my own solution.

Luc asks: After doing a product review of the Shopp ecommerce plug-in for WordPress i noticed that the product has a lot of passionate users and critics of the Shopp plug-in?  What do you have to say to the critics out there? And, what do you have to say to your fans?

Jonathan says: You know you’re on to something when your project evokes strong reactions one way or another.  As hard as it is to see some of the unfair criticism that happens, at least most people don’t go away with a ‘meh’ feeling.

There is a lot of fair criticism out there too, and we work extremely hard to address those when we can. Most of the criticism we get is for our support (or so-called “lack of support”) not for the software itself.  It’s challenging and very costly to support the kind of volume that we have. Couple that with the fact that the project is a technical framework for a very challenging problem with lots of moving parts and lots of supporting pieces from the hosting and site setup and it makes for some time consuming support. That’s further complicated by the technical aptitude of our customers which are a mix of novice web merchants to advanced developers.  Some of those problems our support team can address, others are out of our hands.

Our support experience is a mixed bag of results. When we’re able to provide a solution, we’re “hero of the day”. When we can’t we’re the “big bad company just taking advantage of oh-so innocent people”. With the bird’s eye view I have, I can say we win way more than we lose. But the people that walk away feeling like we let them down (whether fairly or unfairly) – they feel hurt, taken advantage of. A lot of times these situations snowball because of misplaced assumptions and unreasonable expectations. Usually these people are very vocal about their bad experience (even when it is self-inflicted), make themselves very visible and spend time and energy to “hurt us back”. It amazes me to see people go out of their way on a vendetta against Shopp.  I think that’s a terrible shame and waste of energy, but people are people and we’ve got too much work to do to be distracted by it.

To fans of the project, we’ve got a really bright future ahead. We’re growing at a really healthy rate, and one that we’ve built an infrastructure to support. We’re hiring part-time support techs for either part-time employment or on a contractor basis. So we’re expanding our team to improve support. We’ve got training initiatives underway to give more people the raw power to design and develop incredibly creative e-commerce experiences.  We’ve also got an aggressive development schedule to tackle some of the most requested, most needed features.

Luc asks: Do you consider yourself stronger when it comes to designing for the web or developing for the web?

Jonathan says: Myself? These days I’d say I’m more practiced developing. But I really love design work… the creativity and the psychology of it.  In a lot of ways, my development is a form of designing insightful solutions, so while not artful in making marks on a page, there is a craft to my development that comes from my design experience.

Luc asks: Can you share any developments or sneak peeks that you are working on for an update for the Shopp plug-in?

Jonathan says: We will begin next year developing support for recurring transactions that will add subscription and membership products to Shopp. There’s a lot on our roadmap all year long and will keep us very busy.  So we will continue delivering on our promise of an easy to use e-commerce system that offers developers really powerful development tools that integrates seamlessly with WordPress.

Luc asks:  If you could add 5 things about yourself that most people don’t know about you what would they be?

Jonathan says:

1. I am a human being, not a machine. Believe it or not, a lot of people try to treat me like I’m a machine, but alas, I am a flawed human being.

2. I am raising a family with a gorgeous wife, and 2 miracle kids – both that barely survived being born.

3. I am a sci-fi fan and Star Trek nerd. Yeah I said “nerd”. I grew up watching TOS, but also love TNG and DS9. VOY is ok too, and Enterprise is NOT Star Trek.  If you want a good new Star Trek series, read the New Frontier books… Peter David is an incredible author.

4. I like to game when and if I get free time. I have a PS3 and run under the handle ‘solyce’. Feel free to give me a shout and game with me if you’re lucky to see me online.

5. I only worked one other job in my life, a summer job at an ice cream parlor. I can still make a decent cone.

Ryan Scherf is a web designer and developer from Minneapolis, Minnesota in the United States of America. This designer from Minneapolis loves creating brands from scratch, showcasing his skills in the latest tutorials on WebDesignTuts+ and has dabbled in entrepreneurial endeavors most recently founding SixCentral.

Ryan has been designing for the web over the last decade; he is a seasoned professional who graduated from the University of Minnesota from their Computer Science program. What Ryan found when he got out of school and was hired as a Java programmer was that he hated it and with that decided to focus on front-end design and he has been designing ever since.

Though he does hold down a full-time day job as a Senior User Interface Engineer he has always enjoyed freelancing on web design projects as it allows him a creative outlet to hone and perfect his design skills. He currently runs RyanScherf.net and he currently posts updates on his twitter account.

I recently had the chance to ask Ryan about how he first got introduced to web design, the advice he’d give anyone starting in this chosen career path and some questions about his experiences and this is what he had to say…

Luc asks: Ryan, how did you first get started designing websites and how long have you been a web designer?

Ryan says: The first website I ever designed for profit was almost 10 years ago, and it’s still up today (poorly coded of course – http://lomag.net). I got my start by designing websites for small internet companies selling hosting and shell accounts. After a short hiatus during my time at college between 2002-2006, I really had only done small 1-2 page designs. My first larger project was in the winter of 2006 for an e-mail start-up that fell flat. At this point, I only had a few designs that I could showcase in my portfolio, and wasn’t really getting a lot of leads. I started doing some on-the-side slicing from which the owner hired me to do a few design jobs, and that’s really when it all took off. This was probably in early 2007.

Luc asks: What was the most challenging client you’ve ever worked for and why was it a challenge?

Ryan says: I’ve definitely had my fair share of challenging and frustrating clients. Some that wouldn’t pay (even after the work was completed) and others that were far too demanding. The most challenging client I’ve ever had was for a NYC start-up that dealt with Broadway shows. The client rejected 2-3 designs in a row, and provided poor direction for every single iteration. I’m fortunate now that I’m able to identify troublesome clients from the very first e-mail exchanges, so I’ve been lucky to avoid situations like this over the last few years.

Luc asks: Ryan, I noticed that you currently work full-time and that you also freelance. How do you manage between being a full-time employee?

Ryan says: That’s right — my entire freelance career has been nights/weekends apart from full-time jobs. For me, freelancing is a great creative outlet that is a lot less limiting than what I do as an in-house designer. The draw of freelancing for me is the ability to work on brand new designs every few weeks, and not having to work in the constraints of a rigid system. Fortunately, the last two full-time jobs I’ve had have been health care start-ups, so not only was there a ton of work to do, but the start-up community has been a lot of fun. The hard part is not overbooking myself, as the line between fun and burning out is very fine. I’ve been fortunate so far, but we’ll see how it goes in the future.

Luc asks: I see that you studied Computer Sciences when you went to university at the University of Minnesota. Being from a computer science educational background do you feel that you are a strong graphic designer or is this a skill that you feel you are working at? Do you prefer coding to the visual design work that your work offers you?

Ryan says: I always felt that I had to work harder at being a designer, than I did at being a programmer. I sort of fell into the Computer Science degree, as I always had an interest in computers and that felt like the next step after high school. The first job I took while in my last year at the university was as a Java developer intern, and I hated every second of it. That was really the moment I realized that I wanted to be creative in a different way. Within 6 months, I had moved to another department where I was able to do more front-end work and I never looked back.

Coming from a Computer Science background has helped me understand the limitations (and possibilities) of systems much more than I would have by just pursuing the graphic design course.

Luc asks: What piece of advice would you give a novice web designer looking to break into the industry?

Ryan says: Get your work out there. The design community is truly one of the most helpful communities around, and by putting yourself out there, you’re certain to get very constructive feedback from a group of passionate people for free. I haven’t met one designer that wouldn’t offer up feedback — all you have to do is ask. Just by putting your work out for others to critique shows the type of person you are. Also, always remember to not take criticism personal. Design is such a subjective topic, especially from the untrained eye that has no idea what they’re looking at. I was at the Guggenheim Museum in NYC a few years ago, and there was a small piece of gold foil in the middle of a huge room. I didn’t get it (and thought it was ridiculously stupid), but once again, it was only my opinion. Obviously somebody thought it was artistic enough to get into the Guggenheim — I’ve never had anything displayed in there.

The second bit of advice I’d give is to stick to it. There will always be designers that are better. Instead of beating yourself up about it, strive to do what they do. I can remember mimicking styles of really great designs to learn. Then, once I found my own style, I just went with it.

Luc asks: I see that you’ve published a number of tutorials on industry leading sites like WebDesignTuts+. How did you get into writing tutorials and why do you find it important to share your knowledge?

Ryan says: I was approached by the editor of PSDTuts last year to write a tutorial, and I thought it would be a great way to drive some traffic to my portfolio as well as share a little knowledge. I’ll admit, the first time writing a tutorial was pretty difficult and I almost gave up midway through after about 10 hours. Once I saw how helpful it was to the readers, I became addicted, and I’m trying to commit to writing a tutorial once a month (I haven’t been good about it just yet).

The message I wanted to get across to the readers is that you’re only limited by your own creativity. Creating the designs in Photoshop is pretty simple. Honestly, all of the techniques I used to create the elements of a design are probably beginner level, but the trick is mixing and matching all of them to produce a great result.

Christine Pham has been a web designer and front-end developer for over five years and currently works in Massachusetts in the United States. She is completely self taught as a web designer, having never finished college or university; however, she takes every advantage to improve her skills and knowledge. When we talked to her, she spoke to us about what keeps her passionate about web design, how she got into becoming a web designer, and her preferences between coding and designing. Please read on about Christine Pham…

Luc Asks: You said that you are completely self taught, Christine.  Did you study something else at university or college before deciding on web design?

Christine says: I come from a pretty strict family, so going to college wasn’t optional after I graduated from high school. I did spend two years in college, switching majors frequently but eventually dropped out. I think I really only attended about a quarter of my scheduled classes each semester. I skipped classes all the time, even in high school, which was a total waste of money. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m the type of learner who can benefit from everything a classroom can offer. I learn more kinetically; by actually doing things myself and solving problems in a practical work environment. Maybe one day I will go get my degree… I’ve thought about it, but I’m really trying to focus on my work right now.

Luc Asks: With over 5 years of experience designing for the web, what is it that still keeps you passionate about web design?

Christine says: Even though I haven’t had the most sparkling history of being a great student, I do like to learn as many things as I can, and as often as I can. I love that the nature of this industry offers me the opportunity to keep doing that. You have to keep learning to be successful in this field; you’ve got to get your hands on as much as you can, because if you stop educating yourself for just a year… well, you’ll wake up and realize that you’re already two years behind. I’ve been teaching myself about web design since I was 15, and I still have a lot more to learn. Needless to say, I do a lot of “googling”.

Luc Asks: When it comes to typography in your projects do you use pre-built fonts or do you do your own typographic design work?

Christine says: Fonts are like boys to me; I always have a flavor of the week. Just kidding, I’m not that popular with the boys. I do purchase and download fonts for use in my projects, and I go through phases where I like a certain slab font (Rockwell and I had a long term relationship), and then I’ll switch to a script, and then maybe to a sans serif. I love that web technology has evolved to the point that I now have more interesting options than your run-of-the-mill web fonts. I love playing with typography in my layouts.

Luc Asks: Looking at your work experience i see that you’ve jumped around a fair amount since you started your web design career.  Do you think that this is fairly common in the web design career path?

Christine says: I think it’s common for most creatives – in any industry – to jump from job to job, at least in the beginning years of their career. I think a lot of it has to do with ego, to be honest. I suppose a lot of it also had to do with the fact that I was so young and naive that I didn’t realize how much my skills were actually worth. I went through a lot of periods where I’d have to reevaluate my worth and what my salary was at the time. I think I’ve grown up since then – I have gotten to a point in my career where I’m looking for security and stability. I work at a great company now that offers that (shout out to Edvisors!). And I also have a lot of other work that I do at home to satisfy my other needs… so it all balances out.

Luc Asks: Do you consider yourself a stronger coder or designer?

Christine says: I started out as more of a graphic designer – I did a lot of print as well as web design at my first job. But I think now I’m definitely more of a developer. I’m learning PHP right now – I’ve known basic PHP for a couple years, but I’m really learning more advanced things these days. I have some friends that are backend coders and even they tell me that I have a programmer’s head. Being able to code also gives you the opportunity to make sure your designs retain their creative integrity when the final product is made. I am really anal about making sure that the website rings true to my original design. I consider myself a Front End Developer with a strong eye and background in design.

Luc Asks: What web design project are you most proud of in your career to date and why?

Christine says: That’s sort of like choosing between my babies, isn’t it? I guess, if I had to choose, it would be a project that I’m currently working on with my developer friend, Stela, called myCosmeticBag. It’s still in development, so there’s not much I can show for it, other than our blog; but it’s basically a site where girls can come together and talk and learn about makeup, as well as manage the items in their makeup collection. Users will be able to post reviews on their favorite cosmetics products, or read reviews before they choose whether or not to make a purchase. It’s also kind of like my playground for learning PHP and experimenting with HTML 5 and other new technologies. I consider this project my true baby because it’s our own concept, and it’s not a site that I’m just designing for a client. I guess that would make my other projects like adopted children!

Some more of Christine Pham’s Web Design Work:

Adelina Green is a web and graphic designer from Washington State in America.  Before she received her associate’s degrees in Graphic and Web Design she spent over 8 years designing and learning Photoshop and honing her design skills.  After moving from Moldova to the United States she was able to finally achieve her dreams and work towards becoming a respected and professional designer.  Please take a moment to read some more about her experiences in print and web design to date…

Luc asks: Where did you study Web and Graphic design?  Are you currently still studying or did you graduate?

Adelina says: My dad bought me Adobe Photoshop 8 years ago, when I was in high-school, and fell in love with it since. My only source of learning was online tutorials that became my everyday apprehension of using the Photoshop tools. Because of the lack of graphic design education in my home country (Moldova), I had to move to USA to follow my dream of becoming a professional graphic and web designer. Graduated Everett Community College with Associate Degrees in Graphic and Web Design few months ago and was blessed with the best teachers.

Luc asks: Adelina, you’ve been designing in Photoshop for the past eight years.  What tools, plugins or add-ons do you like to work within your design projects the most currently?

Adelina says: In my opinion the ability of using everything Photoshop can offer can result in wonderful designs. You have to know small details and tools that can give that exclusive and professional look. I don’t focus on certain add-ons or plugins, combining everything is the key. Also including Adobe Illustrator can definitely make your life easier and can lead to a better outcome.

Luc asks: When reading the “about” page on your portfolio you break down your creative process into a very logical set of steps from “Defining the Problem” to “Choosing the best solution”.  Do you consider yourself more logical or creative by nature?

Adelina says: I definitely consider myself very logical and a problem solving individual. When I started to learn HTML and CSS I found myself very intrigued and challenged by the way designs can be manipulated with coding. But being able to keep up with the everyday progress is a dedication test for every designer. Being organized and planning every move are not qualities that every person has, but is the key to success.

Luc asks: Where do you draw inspiration from as a designer?

Adelina says: Inspiration is one of first steps in every project. My inspiration comes from great designers that push the boundaries through beautiful typography, good color choice, interesting layouts and great solutions. Also I like to put myself in the viewer’s shoes to find a better solution. Every web and graphic designer has to understand know their public first before starting any design.

Luc asks: Adelina, in the design projects you currently work on do you currently code your design work?  If so, what languages do you currently work with?

Adelina says: Using great programs like Dreamweaver helps a lot, but I use it more as a spell check since there can be situation when I won’t have it close. In our days employers like to see hand coding and that’s what I push myself to do. Also since the recession web developers and web designers seem to merge into one job, that’s why knowledge of jQuery, PHP and Java Script is required.

Hank Toet is a web designer and art director from Los Angeles, California in the United States.  With over 10 years of experience in the field of design he has worked in various positions from “web designer”, “graphic designer” to a “Lead Designer” and most recently an “Art Director” but he received his education in Business Administration.  In one way or another he has been designing for the web since 1996 when Hank discovered websites and wanted to learn how to design and program them.

Hank recently got together with SpicyWebDesigners.com to talk about his experiences in design, why he loves designing for the web and his views on formally educated designers versus self taught designers.

Luc asks: Hank, with your extensive design experiences, how long have you been designing websites?

Hank says: I first started playing around with Micrograpx Picture Publisher around 1996.

I enjoyed browsing around the web and wanted to learn how to design and program websites.

I used Microsoft Front page to put together my websites but when I got my first job working as an html editor I was forced to stop using Front Page and learn how to code by hand. I’m happy I did because Front Page sucked!

Soon after that I left my PC behind and got my first Mac, haven’t look back since!

Luc asks: Are you formally educated in design or self taught?  Do you feel it’s better for a designer to have a formal education or be a self taught designer?

Hank says: Back when I started designing websites there were really no courses you could take or schools you could go to, to learn how to be a web designer.

I really wanted to learn but didn’t know where to go so I was forced to figure it out for myself. In hindsight I think it would have been nice to have had some formal education but the benefit of being self taught is that I’ve never had to unlearn the rules that are imposed on you with a formal design education. I was free to do whatever I wanted which allowed for a lot of experimentation and probably led me to solutions I would not have thought of if I was formally trained.

Luc asks: Why do you love being a web designer?

Hank says: Growing up I never really knew what I wanted to do in life but I always had a strong interest in design, I loved graffiti culture, urban design, underground music and the style that goes

along with that. When the internet started to become popular and I started to design for it. It was like all the puzzle pieces fell into place and I finally found something that was me. Whenever I sit down in front of Photoshop and look at an empty canvas I get this rush and anything is possible. It’s being excited about the possibilities and trying to do the best you can and hopefully being proud with the results when you are done. I also feel this process of learning and getting better at what you do will never stop. At least not for me, I want to keep doing this until the day I die.
Luc asks: I see that you have experience working on mobile design projects, what are your major concerns or considerations you make when designing a project for a mobile device?

Hank says: My main concern is UI; there are a lot of applications out there that just don’t make any sense. It’s easy to make something look good but it has to be usable.