Kimberly Coles is currently a Senior Interactive Art Director at a full-service agency. She currently resides in Indianapolis, Indiana in the USA. While she still designs websites from time to time, she is more involved in art directing the planning, discovery, design, development and launch phases of web and interactive projects. It is her job to manage projects from strategy to execution. She provides overall art direction for interactive design including websites, Flash presentations and online marketing while making sure it is tightly integrated with brand creative direction in multiple channels.
1. How did you first get started in web design?
To understand how I ended up designing websites, we have to go back to the beginning of time. While still in high school, I was awarded a full scholarship to the Savannah College of Art and Design for Illustration based on my awards from several juried competitions. I entered SCAD (as it is affectionately called by students) in 1986 determined to have a commercial illustration career.
However, during the late 1980s, the economy began falling into a recession. As I entered my junior year at SCAD, I decided to switch my major to Graphic Design. It wasn’t that I had a great love for graphic design rather that I felt that I would be better prepared to get a job as a graphic designer with illustration skills. Or vice versa.
At that time, SCAD was on the cutting edge of bringing technology into art and design education when they brought in Commodore’s Amiga computers for Computer Science classes. I discovered I had a knack for computer graphics, pixel illustrations and simple animations in my graphic design courses.
After graduating, I landed a job as a Production Artist where I specialized in paste-up and phototypesetting. While this was far from my dream job, it helped me better understand the fundamentals of graphic design. Paste-up, in all its glory, was more than just a page-composition technique. It was an art form in itself.
It would be 4 more years until I had a chance to use my computer design skills again. I was lucky to get a print design job with a company that had just started using Apple Macintoshes for design, desktop publishing and prepress. Soon after, I started designing and animating multimedia presentations on floppy disks and eventually CD-ROMs with Macromedia Director in 1994 when the company wanted to branch out into multimedia production. I utilized Director for several years, refusing to make the switch to Flash until somewhere around the year 2000.
2. When did you start designing websites?
I started designing websites in 1996 because clients were viewing the medium as a chance for quick and inexpensive advertising. Web design in 1996 was very easy–I was designing sites with plain text, a few animated GIFs, background Midi music and little functionality. These were the days of GeoCities, Tripod, and Angelfire and obscure URLs. My first websites were designed and coded using a Adobe GoLive and HTML Tables. I designed for Netscape Navigator. In the early days, my websites didn’t work effectively due largely to the fact that general principals of design taken from print media and were being clumsily applied to the layout. But, at least I wasn’t alone… I checked the Wayback Machine to be sure.
As time went on, I also started designing and animating websites in Flash. I still do this from time to time, but it’s usually only once a year as most clients are moving away from Flash-based sites. A lot of times, Flash will be used for concept-driven micro sites to give the visitor an immersive and emotional experience that a CSS site can’t duplicate.
From 1996 to 2002, I was responsible for the design, art direction and production of print, web, and interactive. It was sometimes tough to move between different skill sets in my daily routine. So, in 2002, I finally made the permanent switch to web and interactive.
3. How has your education at Savannah College of Art and Design helped you in your career?
In my first couple of years at the Savannah College of Art and Design, there were still only a couple of classroom buildings and three dorms. This small college in a historic setting with ancient live oak trees covered with huge swaths of Spanish moss and gorgeous architecture was a mysterious and magical place that proved to be important in the transformation of my illustration subject matter and style. The college experience allowed me to take full advantage of the of the city itself, utilizing the plethora of art, architectural styles and southern lifestyle to inspire me like no other college or university could have.
Attending SCAD was an invaluable experience that provided me with a thorough grounding in both fine art and commercial art skills and design principles. The foundation courses gave me the confidence to be equally at home with a pencil, a paint brush, an X-acto knife or a mouse. The school, even then, was a creative haven. I never had to go far to find inspiration from other majors such as Fibers, Jewelry, Painting or Historic Preservation.
The college emphasized learning through individual attention. Under the leadership of professors with real-world experience, the college was able to cultivate the unique qualities of each student with the small class sizes and intimate classrooms. SCAD didn’t seem interested in turning out average artists, but real working professionals who would be able to make a living with their crafts for the rest of their lives. Many of my professors encouraged us to try every possible kind of artwork to improve our skills and find inspiration no matter where we were in our careers. Many years later, the creative and technical skills I learned in Illustration and Graphic Design at SCAD have translated well into my career as a web designer. Without SCAD, I would still be scraping the surface of what I am capable of accomplishing.
4. What web technologies do you regularly use in projects and why do you choose to use them?
First off, I use a Mac. Always have. Always will. I’m a designer, not a coder, so PCs have no place in my heart. Thank goodness Apple made a comeback in the 90s, otherwise, I would have had to change careers.
I always start website projects by generating written ideas and solidifying concepts and big ideas. Thinking broadly about a problem and generating several conceptual ideas early in the process always leads to a better solution at the end.
Next, I start drawing pencil thumbnails. This is an important time-saving step that is employed before the design phase to get the account executives, copywriters, designers, developers and QC department on the same page before any time is spent designing a website.
I use Adobe InDesign to create sitemaps, wireframes and UX workflows.
I design static website comps using Adobe Photoshop with extremely detailed layers and folders. I use very specific naming conventions for each layer each and every time I design a comp.
Once the final comp is approved by the client, the Photoshop files are sliced manually. I’ve tried Adobe ImageReady or Macromedia Fireworks in the past. But, I prefer to slice individual pieces by hand using the marquee tool, the pixel setting and the info toolbox. As a former print designer and self-taught web designer, this is the fastest and most accurate technique for me. Eyeballing with the slicing tool in Photoshop is just not accurate enough. And the other softwares are just fluff to get designers to think they need to spend more money on something they don’t really need. Photoshop is everything you need and more if you know the basics of math and optimization.
If I code the site myself using XHTML/CSS, I use Adobe Dreamweaver. I used to use the WYSIWYG viewer. But, after learning CSS, I find that hand coding is faster and easier to understand than learning how to use Dreamweaver itself. I’ve experimented with PHP and MySQL to build WordPress blogs.
However, I truly understand that coding is not my forte. No web designer should ever underestimate the importance of partnering with a good web developer to push their designs and functionality to the highest standards. Obviously, in these economic times, employers and clients are looking for cross-functional, hybrid talent who can design and develop a campaign from start to finish. Having a background in design, I’ve always felt a bit of a fake discussing web programming anyway. It’s the whole left brain versus right brain, creativity versus logic idea. Even though I’ve worked with several patient developers who have raised my knowledge of coding to a new level, it’s still my opinion that a web developer is more qualified than a designer to to discuss programming issues with the team and the client.
5. How do you normally price your web design projects for clients?
Before estimating anything, I conduct a client survey in order to understand more about the scope of the project. Most potential clients bristle at the thought of answering so many questions. But, I explain to them that it’s very difficult to give even a range of costs without knowing what has been done already or what needs to be done based on the company’s brand and business goals. I typically have to start by explaining that a website is more than design and coding. A website represents perhaps the single greatest opportunity to communicate a company’s brand expression and unique areas of differentiation. While their goal is to make a lasting first impression with a new design, it is my duty to make sure they understand the importance of the balance between design and function. My goal is to always produce a site that enables the consumer to understand that the company is trustworthy, user-friendly and the best choice for their needs.
Therefore, each website project is priced differently based on the answers in the client survey. Typically, if the client doesn’t answer the questions, then I know they’re just probing for competitive pricing. These aren’t the kind of clients I’m looking for. I’m looking for clients who take their website seriously and who would consider phased approaches in order to accommodate their budgets.
6. What is the biggest challenge that you currently face in web design?
The many flaws of traditional strategic planning methods make it virtually impossible for Advertising Agencies and Marketing Communication firms to appreciate and internalize the depth and breadth of the responsibilities they have for web 2.0 and beyond. This may not be the case in larger cities, but this has been my experience in the past and in the present.
7. What are some things you want people to know about your web design business?
I don’t believe there is ever only one absolute creative solution to any given situation. I think gaining experience within different areas of online and offline media adds extra resources to your creative utility belt, enabling you to consider the otherwise unconsidered. Starting out as an illustrator and a print designer has always given me an edge over other designers who don’t have alternate skills to fall back on. On almost every web design project I do nowadays, I am able to incorporate my own illustration work. Switching majors in college has really paid off as I am now known for both my design and illustration skills.
