Spicy Web Designer Interview with Benjamin Tollady

8 Sep

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).