Spicy Web Designer Interview with Zach Woomer

Zach Woomer is a web designer from Berwick, Pennsylvania in the United States. He studied at the Antonelli Institute of Art and Photography. Since then he has honed his design style on a wide array of web design projects and continues to stay current. He loves his Adobe products and has learned most of his skills on the job.

1. How did you get started in web design?

I got interested from a friend in school, but I really got started when I started at United Bank Card, the company I work for currently. They hired me right out of school as a web designer when I knew absolutely nothing about web design. But, they liked my work and willingness to learn, and took a chance on me. The rest is history as they say.

2. When did you start designing websites?

Well, when I first got hired there was a senior web designer at UBC, Emily Holmes. The first few weeks she showed me a few sites here and there for me to go to and learn, watch and complete tutorials and what not. As far as actual work she had me update site content here and there. But then she eventually moved on to bigger and better things, and left me here as the only web designer. So about 5 months into my job that I barely knew how to do, I was designing and building entire sites. It was a huge learning curve and I’m learning more every day.

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

Probably trying to catch up. I’m trying to establish myself as a professional when there’s still so much to learn. CMS is the next hurtle. Learning things like that on your own takes twice as long as just having someone there to show you. Slow and steady though.

4. Do you ever refer to yourself as a Front-end developer or a web designer? Do you code any of the web sites that you design currently? If so, what language(s) do you code in?

I usually introduce myself as a web designer, but I like to interpret that as the whole package. Nowadays it seems if a web designer can’t code his own design, you’re like a dishwasher who gets the water ready but won’t wash any dishes. All the sites I design, I code. I’m the only web designer at the company I work for so I can’t really rely on anyone else. And most of the freelance jobs I take are for an entire site, not just the design. I’m able to code xhtml and css no problem, but things like php, asp, javascript, etc. I usually search around the web until I find what I need then mess with it until it works.

I wouldn’t like it any other way really. When there’s someone else there that knows more than you, that seems to take all the fun out of it. Because if you eventually come to something you don’t know, you’ll just have to pass it off to the one who knows better so it gets done on time, rather than get the chance to really learn and problem solve on your own. That’s just my opinion though, you very well may learn more with someone there to help you. Depends I guess.

5. Where did you go to school and has it helped you become a better web design professional?

I went to Antonelli Institute of Art and Photography. That school definitely helped me become a better design professional, but not really a better web design professional. They have a web design course but it’s only a 2 year school, and they have that course during the last 2 semesters, so it was very limited. During that time we barely brushed the surface of all the possibilities web design has to offer. We learned how to work flash to build a functioning site but as far as touching on coding or developing, there wasn’t really any in depth look at it. But, that’s not to take away from the merit of the school. Besides that slight hitch, I learned a hell of a lot about design, understanding how to balance out a page, typography, white space, color theory. And the school being as small as it is, I was able to have a closer relationship with my professors and that enabled me to really learn as much as I possibly could in that time period. So all in all, the school taught me a lot and really prepared me to go out and be a working professional. But, most of the web side of things came post-college.

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 don’t know, it seems to be getting better in my eyes. From what I see of older practices, it was a lot harder to really get a desired outcome as far as design goes. But now you’re able to really manipulate code to better fit your needs, and browsers are becoming more and more compliant. I can’t really speculate a whole lot because I’m still very new at this, but the horror stories I hear from older web design professionals about table layouts and internet explorer, I’m sort of glad I got into it when I did. Thank god for CSS.

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

I’m an adobe suite kind of guy. Give me photoshop, illustrator and dreamweaver and I’ll die a happy man. Besides those obvious tools, I would say the internet has been my greatest tool. Without it, I wouldn’t know anything about web design. And quite frankly, I wouldn’t need to know web design if the internet didn’t exist, so there you go.