Jason King is a not-for-profit web designer. He is originally from the UK but he currently resides in Melbourne Australia. While in London, UK, he was a circuit rider (a roving IT worker that supports the caseload of small not-for-profit organizations) and most recently he has been doing web design in the not-for-profit sector. Originally he started as a Librarian before turning to not-for-profit web design to make a difference.

1.  How did you get started in Web Design?  When did you first start designing websites? How did you first become involved in not-for-profit website design?

I used to be a librarian in the north of England but there were few jobs and little money in that. So in 2000 I moved to West London and began a new career as a circuit rider. You may not have heard the term, so what’s a circuit rider? Simply put, they’re a roving IT worker who supports a caseload of small not-for-profit organizations.

I noticed that almost all of those small charities were struggling with their websites, for various reasons: lack of funding, lack of staff time, unreliable volunteers, wrong decisions, poor documentation, and cowboy web designers. So I taught myself to build websites to offer my clients a web design service that understood their needs and limitations.

2. Where do you draw your inspiration from when taking on new web design projects?

I’m not a graphic designer; I’m more of a small project manager, CMS implementer and HTML/CSS coder. So my designs aren’t beautiful but they’re simple, functional and reliable and standards-compliant.

The smaller nonprofits tend to be somewhat conservative in their tastes and unaware of what can be done online these days. They’re may not be brimming with great ideas or have good images or even a usable logo. They need time and a certain amount of hand-holding to come up with a good project brief and to prepare materials and content. I encourage charities to look at example of good practice web design and to think hard about what works and what doesn’t in their field.

3. How do you price your web design work especially because you are focused primarily on NFP agencies?

I hate the whole business of quoting for work, it’s difficult to balance what’s fair with what keeps me fed and difficult to accurately judge how much time is likely to be involved. I’ve under-quoted far too often in the past – I’m trying to reverse that trend!

Just because an organization is nonprofit doesn’t mean it has no money. All nonprofits should have a strategy and a budget for their IT systems and for their web communications. I’ve sometimes helped organizations to put together a funding proposal and written the bids, so that they can then contract me as their web designer.

One of the best resources nonprofits have available is the support of volunteers and it is possible to find talented, professional volunteer web designers (e.g. via www.it4communities.org.uk) or have work done pro bono by a design agency. But volunteers can’t be expected to give long-term support or deliver a complex, unfunded project.

4. Do you normally work with other freelance web designers on projects?

Occasionally I do, and intend to do so more in future. One limitation of working solo is that you’re not likely to win the larger contracts, plus there are obviously gaps in any one person’s skills and abilities.

I often work with non-techies. For example, on a recent web project there was a project manager, a graphic designer who provided the banner and color scheme, a person employed to write original content and a copy editor to make it presentable, plus I had to liaise with a data inputter. In a situation like this the role of the project manager can be vital in keeping everyone on track.

5. Where did you go to school and did it help you in your career as a web designer?

I took a librarianship degree in Leeds. Librarianship teaches you to organize, categorize, present and describe information in ways that make it easy for its target audience to find and comprehend. Those lessons continue to be useful, especially where planning website architecture, implementing the tagging and categorizing of content, and anything database-related is concerned. Librarians have had to become much more tech and web savvy in the last decade because nowadays the bulk of information is online.

I never attended web design courses. Few of them seemed up-to-date with current ways of working and anyway I’m too impatient to sit and listen. I learn most of my skills from books, from magazines like .Net and other peoples’ blogs.

I recently mentored another web designer, teaching them how to customize WordPress to act as the CMS for their website redevelopment; and I’ve taught classes in web design. Teaching can make an enjoyable break from coding and it’s a handy additional source of income.

6. What web design sites do you frequently visit to stay on top of new topics in the field of web design?

I’d recommend the Boagworld podcast and the various emails and blogs from Sitepoint. Smashing Magazine is great for so many reasons. Take a look at TechSoup for nonprofit technology articles and discussion, including about web design.

I have to plug the Making Links conference in Melbourne, Australia in November. This year we’re putting on a whole day of sessions about nonprofit web development. Or if you’re in the US maybe you could go to the NTEN nonprofit conference instead.

Tony Grgurevic is a web designer from Geelong just outside of Victoria, Australia. He is inspired by other web designers that push the boundaries of what is possible on the web using his passion in everything design from architecture to animation. He is a pretty modest web designer but his work is definitely worth a look. Most of what he has learned in his skills to become a great web designer have been learned from “on the job” experience even though he attended the Victorian University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia which gave him the tools to succeed.

1. I find that every web designer that I meet has their own style and influences, can you tell us what are your styles and what influences you when you are designing a website?

I think I don’t have a style of my own… It’s hard to when I am not creating art but trying to communicate on behalf of a client. I am influenced by many web-designers out there – way too many to mention.

2. Do you find that you have a lot of competition designing websites for clients?

No not really, most of my business finds me so the competition is not really there…

3. How did you first start in your career as a web designer? Did another artist, designer or creative person influence you in any way to start?

I got into web-design after completing graphic design diploma and found interactive media more attractive, exciting and evolving fast… my brief experience with print based graphic design involved industry people who believed they were curing cancer…found out quickly this was not for me! (hope I have not offended anybody)

I have not had any one influence made take this rocky road. But started out of high school a creative type person, interested in many different forms of art & design, architecture, sculpture, animation, information and design in general.

4. How do you price your web design projects? Do you have a standard way of pricing or is every client unique requiring a different amount of analysis before quoting a customer?

Understanding the type of person you are dealing with is key… if your customer is fastidious and detail driven then your quote needs to be accurate, but if their requests are general your quote can be too… but remembering to keep them informed when budgets or quotes need to be altered. I usually just ‘guess-timate’ how long a job might take me and multiply by an hourly rate I am happy to work to… or ask the customer the project budget (if they “um & ah” I start throwing figures at them until they give me an indication) and then telling what they get for that is sometimes much easier!

5. Have you ever worked with other talented web designers on a project? If so, care to name any?

I have only worked with a few other web-designers…but not in any major capacity.

6. Is see that you’ve done design work for agencies on the Cowan Design Website project you have in your portfolio. Do you normally use agencies to get the big projects?

I have worked for design employment agencies and found them to be more trouble than they are worth. I have had the most success finding work the old fashioned way – replying to job ads and sending out portfolio links!

7. What approach do you use to create a “user-centric” website design?

Define what the intended user would be looking for or what service the website is spruiking … then ensure the user has the least amount of obstacles to get the required information or service and move on… Avoid self-indulgence… which is easier said than done when other parties are involved.

8. Do you accept work from international clients or do you try to stay local to the businesses you help with web design?

I have done some work for an overseas client once but had trouble getting paid so I would probably not rush out to do it again.

9. Where did you go to University / College? Has it helped you become a better web designer?

I went to Victorian University of technology in Melbourne’s lovely western suburbs, enjoyed it and it showed me the tools of the trade but most of my interactive media skills have been picked up on the job!

Ben Tollady is a web designer who has worked on some interesting website projects ever since he first started building websites back in 1996 in the UK. Since 2003, Ben has called Australia home working for agencies mainly, he works with other freelancer designers when he isn’t busy on other big projects and you’ll usually find him somewhere around a MAC.

1. How did you first get into web design and how long have you been designing websites for?

I designed my first site in 1996 while I was at university in Loughborough in the UK. There weren’t any web design courses back then but one of the tutors on my Industrial Design course was quite forward-thinking and ran a series of short courses on the basics of this new-fangled HTML thing for those that were interested.

It wasn’t until I left university and started at a fairly large agency in London that I really got into it though.

2. Do you usually work with Creative, Ad or Design agencies?

I’ve worked with a number of agencies both in London and Melbourne (I moved to Australia in 2003). I also do a lot of work directly with small businesses which makes for a nice variety of projects in terms of size and user-types to design for.

3. What is the biggest web design project you’ve been commissioned to do and how did it turn out in the end?

Telstra Business is probably the biggest project I can think of in recent years, although my involvement there was information architecture and HTML/CSS template development rather than design. It was a huge undertaking, consolidating and migrating content from 8 sites into a single, redesigned site with a very short deadline! Thankfully it turned out well and showed great improvement in the usability tests they conducted after the launch.

4. Which college/university did you study at? What did you study and how has it helped you in your career?

I studied for a degree in Industrial design & technology from Loughborough university in the UK back in 1994.

I think the course has been a great help in terms of my web career. The skills and knowledge I gained in terms of ergonomics and human-product interaction lend themselves perfectly to that of human-computer/interface interaction. I see the discipline of industrial design much more synonymous with that of web design than any other design discipline.

5. Do you ever work with other freelance web designers on projects?

Yes, all the time! Especially for help with advanced flash work and back-end development. It’s good working with other people, especially when you work alone most of the time like I do at the moment – it’s interesting seeing how other people work and do things differently.

6. What inspires you to design the websites that you design?

A love for making things, the web and a passion for good usability. Thinking about who is going to use the site is a great inspiration too. I think it’s really important to take the time to understand the intended audience of any site I’m designing to make sure it will ‘speak’ to them.

Reading Jeffrey Zeldman’s book, “Designing with web standards” was a great inspiration too. I also seem to find myself spending inordinate amounts of time surfing the web to see what everybody else is up to.

7. One of the most interesting sites in your portfolio is the “Howl’s Moving Castle”? How was it working with Madman Entertainment on this project?

I worked at Madman for a couple of years when I first arrived in Melbourne. It’s a great place to work – absolutely packed to the rafters with talented young designers. I learnt so much from the other guys working there it’s not funny!

Other than the great team, the best thing about working on Madman projects was the fantastic artwork available to you for each project, and Howl’s Moving Castle was no exception. The design of that site was easy given I had such a wealth of fantastic artwork thanks to the Studio Ghibli drawings I was provided. We were also lucky enough to go to an advanced screening of the film before I built the site, so I had a good idea of how the site should feel having seen that.

8. Do you design your web sites on a mac or a PC? Judging by the first email I received from you came from an iPhone I am guessing you are running a MAC but maybe I am wrong? What is your workstation setup like?

Since starting my freelance business last year I’ve gone all-out MAC (I was PC before). It all started with a 24″ iMac which is my main work machine and then I got one of the black macBooks soon after for working on-site. My newest addition is the iPhone which I absolutely love.

9. What are the essential pieces of software that you work with when designing you web projects?

Omnigraffle (for wireframes and site-maps), Photoshop, Coda, Flash and iTunes (You can’t design in silence).

More about this Web Designer

URL: Tollady.com

Email/Contact: studio@tollady.com

Phone: +61 (0) 424 285 928