Web Design Inspiration Blog | SpicyWebDesigners.com

Shawn Johnston is the Creative Director from BlackWave Creative in Parsippany, New Jersey in the United States of America. He brings with him 13 years of professional design experience. BlackWave Creative is developing a custom CMS called Kimera that is launching in late spring of 2009 that is PHP/mySQL based. Even though the company itself is only a year old it has a good team of talented people including Shawn who bring their professional experience to BlackWave Creative.

1. How long has BlackWave Creative been in business since?

Blackwave has been in business for one year, and in earnest for 4 months. My professional experience extends back 13 years.

2. What are some of the benefits of hiring your web design company?

Blackwave works at a very polished level of professionalism and personal responsibility to our clients. Our motto “We are what we make” states this perfectly. Every project gets our total focus, creativity and dedication. Every time, no excuses. To compliment this, we pride ourselves in our creative and out of the box approach to web and brand design. We’re not big fans of grids and boxy trends. We try to inject personal touches, and unique elements into every design we do. To round this off, Blackwave is a 21st century business in that we don’t believe in office fronts or superfluous overhead costs. We’re essentially a band of freelancers, and we want to keep it that way. It keeps us nimble and low-cost without sacrificing integrity or our passion for what we do.

3. Does your company work off of a proprietary platform that was built-in house or do you use pre-built platforms (WordPress, ExpressionEngine, osCommerce, etc.) to run your clients online web presences?

We are in the process of developing our own CMS called Kimera which should launch late Spring ’09. The back-end is PHP/MySQL based and eCommerce enabled with a healthy dash of AJAX drag and drop, with
template selections, and common JavaScript plugins like coverflows, accordions and popups to name a few. The front-end is all table-less web standard CSS with plenty of JavaScript functionality. We’re putting it together based on two precepts…what do designers want and what do customers need? Designers want easy to add JavaScript plugins and simple creative customization and customers need ease-of-use and intuitive interfaces and Kimera will have these in spades. We do work with commercial CMS’s like Magento and open-source systems like WordPress, but often they’re a lot like driving a tank to pick up the mail. Kimera will be designed to be light weight and transparent for faster load time, quick page views and superb search engine optimization.

4. What are some of the most frequent questions people ask about your business and how do you answer them?

People often ask about our freelancer collaborative setup. It’s a somewhat less well-known way of doing business that does require good communication and teamwork. But with the right mix of personalities it
works very well. My common answer to this question is to quote the Musketeers, “all for one and one for all.” The egos get parked at the door at Blackwave. We’re about the work, not accolades.

5. Do you have a physical office where clients can come in for a consultation or does the office run virtually?

As mentioned above, we’re a virtual outfit and plan to remain that way. We meet clients wherever they’d like: local coffee shops, restaurants, or their offices. Whatever they need. This often works in our favor.

6. What is your company best known for in the web design industry?

As a relatively young design company, we’re still making our mark. Having said that, during my freelance career I recently was included in a Smashing Magazine article highlighting hand drawn elements in web
design. This goes back to what I said earlier about adding personal and unique touches to our designs. We follow the design trends close enough to be relevant but we always try to push every design a little (or a lot!) off the beaten path.

7. Do you employ freelance web designers either on-site or off-site, part-time or full-time?

All of the above. We have one full timer, another on part-time retainer and a few we bring in on an hourly basis. Each designer has a style or a set of strengths. We try to match the project with who we think will be able to use their strengths to give the client what they’re looking for while standing up to Blackwave’s standards.

8. How does your company feel about outsourcing?

If by outsourcing you mean to places like India or China, on principal we’re not against it provided the workers in those countries are being paid Western level incomes and in acceptable working conditions.
Anything less is exploitation and we are firmly against it. We don’t use it ourselves as the time zones and language barriers present enough obstacles to make it a less than worthwhile endeavor. In web development and design, you get what you pay for. If you’re paying bottom dollar, you’re going to get less skilled designers and developers and your final product will reflect that. I think that most clients out there understand that.

Melissa Connolly is one half of the husband and wife team at emTwo Web Studios from Charlotte, North Carolina in the United States of America. Together with her husband Sean Connolly they’ve built a small yet very focused web design company. Melissa has been designing websites since 2001. emTwo Web Studios designs for ExpressionEngine and WordPress but they also develop for other platforms at well.

1. How did you first get started in web design?

I first started doing web design after I started blogging in 2001.  I began by designing my own blog, which looking back on it now, was horrible. But we grow, right?  At the time, “blog skins” were pretty popular and I think I had at least 20 different “skins” for my blog.  Every now and then I would get a comment from a reader who wanted me to design their blog.  At first it was a hobby…and then it grew into a passion.

2. How do you find being a husband and wife team in the web design industry?

We love it.  We absolutely love working together.  Sean does most of the coding, while I’ll come up with the concepts for each site.  He keeps me spirited and optimistic while I keep him practical and realistic.  We compliment one another really well.

3. How long have you been doing freelance web design?

I’ve been doing freelance work since 2002, though during that time I held a “regular” job which paid the rent.  In June 2007, I quit that job and jumped head first into our business and we’ve been thriving ever since.

4. How do you usually price your web design projects?

We quote each project with one lump sum price. This puts the exact dollar amount in front of our clients from the very beginning so they know what to expect and how much it will cost.  Should they need additional items that are outside of the original scope, they know that it will cost more.  This keeps “The Scope Creep” in check.  On rare occasions we bill by the hour, but that’s mostly for maintenance and upgrades.

5. Where do you get your inspiration to design websites?

From everything!  Is that too broad?  I find a lot of inspiration in my own environment; from the clothes I purchase to the branding on my dogs all-natural pet food products to the various magazines we read to the wide assortment of video games we play. I also peruse most of the CSS galleries to see what other designers are creating.  Photography sites also really inspire me.

6. How do your clients usually find you? Through word of mouth? Agencies? Or something else?

I get about 85% of my clients through word of mouth/direct referrals.  The other 10% come through google or the ExpressionEngine Pro Network or various social media sites that we use, like Twitter and Facebook.

7. Do you design exclusively using ExpressionEngine? Or do you use other CMS systems to design for?

We LOVE ExpressionEngine and WordPress and develop for both platforms.  We also develop for other platforms like Movabletype and Ning.  We aren’t afraid to work with something new, so we’ll use whatever CMS is the best solution for our client.

8.  What tools can you not work without when designing a web design project?

For designing:
Photoshop and Illustrator of course
ColorSchemer or ColourLovers
Typetester

For development:
Notepad++
Web Developer Toolbar
Filebug