Spicy Web Designer Interview with Jamie Barton

Jamie Barton is a web designer from Newcastle Upon Tyne, England in the United Kingdom. He earned his degree in Web Development and Management at a North East University but he doesn’t accredit that with helping him with the design of websites. He originally started designing websites back when he was roughly 10 years old and has continuously improved his skills since then. Besides working on his MacBook Pro, Jamie also takes time to learn using sites like Lynda.com most recently to improve his skills in PHP and mySQL.

1. How did you get started in web design?

In Year 5 of my Middle School I wanted a way to show off magic tricks I had been learning and add pictures of the tricks and also have a way for my friends to be able to see the magic collection I had and allow them to add comments, etc. But, it really became a problem when the aesthetic appeal to my site was very limited because I was using Netscape’s Site Builder at the time and only supported templates they had made. This is what started me in web design, because I wanted to have my own unique design and be able to make my website stand out from everyone else.

2. When did you start designing websites?

Very young, I think in Year 5 of my Middle School in England I was 9 or 10. Every day since I made my first website for my magic tricks I have been developing new ways to designing websites and advancing my skill-set. I believe today my abilities have progressed so much further and I am able to offer my ever-long hobby now as a service to others.

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

Competition and being a step ahead. Today’s web design and development industries focus completely on being different, I communicate to my clients in a friendly and professional way, and always work with them and not for them, I take each project seriously and don’t just treat it as ‘another project’ or a ‘way of this month’s rent’, I spend hours getting it right – and that’s what competition usually doesn’t do, at least the bigger companies, and this way of communicating with my clients is really hard to make stand out, because in a testimonial on a website they’re just words. Another challenge is networking, at the moment, because I’m in Higher Education studying Full Time I find it hard to go to networking events and hand out business cards and speaks with other people in the industry or those who require my services, this is losing potential clients and not getting the brand name ‘Escensi’ out there.

4. Do you code any of the web sites that you design currently? If so, what language(s) do you code in?

When I first started designing my own websites I slowly picked up html and how to use tables back in the day. Today, everything I know is all self taught. Languages I am currently fluent with coding without reminding myself are xHTML, CSS, PHP and SQL. I mostly all of the time code the web designs for myself if I was hired to get a company’s website online, but, most recently I’ve been given work to just design the pages, and not code, so it’s nice having a break from doing all of the designing and the coding, but I still love coding. Currently I am learning Ruby on Rails via video tutorials on a popular screencasts website.

5. I saw that you study your degree in Web Development and Management at a North East University and wanted to ask how has your education helped you become a better web design professional?  What other skills has it helped you to gain and what else has it taught you about design in general?

To be honest, my degree hasn’t helped me design my websites, because the course I did focuses more on the Development side, and designing has always been a hobby and something I’ve done on the side. I have always taught myself in design via experimenting in design applications. If I hadn’t have started my course I would not be using PHP and MySQL now to create Content Management Systems for my clients, I would probably still be just designing and coding into static pages. Another advantage of my course was the amount of deadlines there was. Meeting deadlines helped me get over the perfectionism I had a lot of in my younger years, and most recent, but they seem to be vanishing now and it is allowing me to work more efficiently and quicker on client work, because I’m getting things done without putting them off because it just doesn’t ‘look right’.

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?

Cascading Style Sheets I think saved my life. CSS has become massive over the past few years and the technology behind this is only getting better and better. If it wasn’t for CSS, I think I would have given up completely on coding any of my designs, and like without my Development course, I wouldn’t code in any language all together. So, I think the industry has changed a lot, ‘Web 2.0′ has been, and I think is going, but if it wasn’t for that trend hitting it big and being so much in the media, websites wouldn’t be how they are today.

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

I work on a MacBook Pro that is connected to my 24″ Apple Cinema Display, with 4GB of RAM and a 2.4Ghz Processor, it really is a tool I couldn’t live without, I will never go back to designing on a PC. On the Mac, I use popular industry applications such as TextMate, CSSEdit2.0 and BBEdit, for coding/programming and Photoshop, FireWorks and Illustrator for Design work, and any moving image or animation work I use Flash and After Effects.

8. After checking out your site i wanted to ask why you chose a one page format to represent your skills on the site?

I was asked to show all of my work, and I didn’t want someone to click through folders in a directory I have set-up with my work uploaded into, instead I wanted somewhere they could just click through and see instantly, without having them to do much work, so I just started with having the one page and having mini screenshots to show the work, and once clicked a larger piece of work was shown. I didn’t want there to be much content on the site at first, in the next version of my site, that I am currently planning will focus more on me as a Company and have a lot more information on what I exactly do, and go into the portfolio work a lot more in-depth.

9.  I see that you code in a number of languages including PHP, AJAX, CSS, HTML in your projects and i wanted to ask you what resources either online or in print do you use to stay up to date with learning more about these languages?

I currently use Lynda.com – My father paid for a year’s subscription after I had been paying for a few months and was staying up all night to learn PHP and MySQL in more depth than I was learning on my course. Lynda.com is the only and best resource, I have about ten books on each of languages but I prefer watching someone doing the screencast and me following along. I just work that way better.