Spicy Web Designer Interview with Stephen David Smith

Stephen David Smith is a web designer who is originally from London in the UK who has recently moved to Tokyo, Japan. He has been designing websites for about the last 10 years and started when he was in university where he studied digital art, technology and theories from the fine artists. Even though he is currently getting settled in Japan he is busy working on web design projects. He is well versed in JavaScript, Photoshop, ActionScript, Flash, PHP and other various web technologies.

1. How long have you been designing web sites for?

I probably designed my first websites when I was in University. I had a few modules that required me to build a website, but this was back in 1998, so I guess you could say I’ve been designing websites for 10 years. This isn’t strictly true, as we would always use Dreamweaver (which was in its infancy back then) in design mode. Or maybe use the old slice and export to HTML feature of Photoshop first before tweaking it. I don’t really consider that web design, and furthermore, I didn’t often build websites at that time, nor did I have too much of an interest in web designing. It wasn’t until I graduated from university and looked for a job that I discovered that most of my options were in web design. This was in 2000, when there was plenty of work in that area, so I naturally ended up in a web design job and learnt to build sites properly during my first couple of years at companies in the UK.

2. What did you study in school and has it helped you become a better web designer?

In school I loved art. There was a group of us who used to hang out in the art room at school and draw and paint and listen to death metal in our break times. In other classes like science and math’s, I’d still be drawing; mostly characters from computer games and Japanese animation. Because of this, my math’s was pretty poor, which you would think would be a problem for a programmer, but so far it hasn’t really been the case. When I came to finish high school I just scraped through with the grades I needed to continue on to my chosen University. I had two options: either journalism, or multimedia. I loved art, computers, computer games, electronics, etc., so I went for the latter. The course was hard to pin down in exactly what it taught. The actual course was called BSc MediaLab Arts, and covered all aspects of digital art, technology and grounded it all via the study of post-modern and theoretical thinkers like Descartes, Vonnegut, and guys like that. My lecturers were all from a fine art background. They used Macs everyday for menial tasks, but had virtually no production skills whatsoever. It was their duty to teach us things that would allow us to place out work in a context similar to that of the modern art of the time. I was never really into that stuff. I was most inspired by people at that time who were producing work that wasn’t so pretentious. The work that was purely for entertainment, or didn’t seek to impress the art fraternity. I used to really love music by Aphex Twin, and promos by the director Chris Cunningham. I was also seeing a lot of early Gondry stuff that seemed to tie-in with what I was doing at University, so to begin with my ambition was to make films or to become an animator. I think this really helped me in my web design work because I was able to use skills I’d picked up whilst practicing in After Effects and Flash to produce motion graphics for the web. I think I also formed an attitude towards my work, both in terms of production values and approach, as a result of my time on that degree course.

3. How do you usually price out your web design projects?

In a very casual way. I don’t usually charge by the hour unless it’s a small piece of work, maybe less than one day. Other than that, I tend to charge by the day, week, or even month. If it’s a large project, or there’s stuff in there that I haven’t tackled before, I’ll pad out the quote to cover unforeseen circumstances and extended periods of testing. If the project involves lots of actionscript and general multimedia production outside the usual sphere of web design, I charge slightly more.

4. You seem to be well versed in Flash, PHP, JavaScript and other web technologies.  How do they help you to create some kick ass web designs?  Is there a tool you couldn’t live without?  What is it?

Because of my University course being what it was, and because of my tendency to flit between personal projects and hobbyist work, I often worry that I’m probably a ‘Jack of all trades and a master of none’. One good thing about this is that I do have a broad skills base that helps me when I need some 3D artwork, or some sounds produced for a Flash project, or whatever. PHP, CSS, and XHTML are still my strongest points. I’m not great with JavaScript, but then I think you can get away with that nowadays because of the advent of libraries like jQuery and so on. I don’t use Joomla, or Drupal. I tend to write fairly bespoke code. I guess I couldn’t live without jQuery, but I still rate the whole CS Design Premium suite from Adobe as the ultimate toolset without which I wouldn’t be able produce websites. If I need to update code or administer databases, I can do that on any computer without any specialist software, but when it comes to creative tasks, you have to have the right environment. If I was to use Windows Vista, I’m sure it’s garish interface would affect the quality of my designs, and would have a negative effect on my frame of mind during the design process. This is why I do everything on Mac OS X. It’s so elegant, and when I wake up in the morning, I can’t wait to turn on my computer and start working. Also, testing is a breeze. I run an installation of Windows XP on my Mac, so when I test a website, I can do cross-platform, cross-browser testing on one screen. For all of these reasons, the other tool I couldn’t do without is my MacBook Pro. And finally, something I just thought of, XAMPP. I definitely couldn’t do without this Apache distribution software, as it allows me to quickly and easily set up a testing environment. If I’m on someone else’s machine, I can download this software from the net, install it, and be ready to test scripts really quickly. I still consider myself more of a creative than a programmer, so I don’t like getting my hands dirty!

5. How do you it being a UK web designer in Tokyo?

It’s still early days for me at the moment. I came to Tokyo at the beginning of this year, and for the most part I did a lot of clothes shopping in Harajuku, and a lot of partying in Ueno and Shibuya. I was still working on several freelance projects during this time, but I had some savings, so I could take time between projects to enjoy myself, get to know some people, and explore the city. I also took time building my personal site, my blog, and writing entries for the blog. Usually I talk about interesting stuff I find in Tokyo, but also films, technology, books, and design too. I’m interested in interior design, architecture, graphic design, product design, music, film, technology, anime, manga and so on, so there couldn’t be a better place for me to live right now. You can always find some inspiration in the city; you just have to have the time to get out there, and try to avoid staying in your apartment all the time working! Being from the UK means I’m a slightly rarer commodity over here than American web designers, of which there are probably more. In fact, there are way more Americans than Brits here in general. There are some international studios here in Tokyo that use mainly English in the workplace. These are normally small, closely-knit units, and they rarely hire new staff. On top of that, if you don’t have a very good grasp of Japanese, you can’t find work in the big companies that tend to use Japanese in the workplace. For this reason, freelance is something you often have to do, to tide you over until an opportunity arises to gain employment in an environment you are suited to. I’m also studying Japanese as much as I can in the hope I can get to a level high enough to work in a Japanese studio one day. My life is pretty busy, but I have to say I love living in Tokyo, so I’ve decided to stay for maybe another one or two years (situations at home in the UK permitting).

6. How do you get new clients? Agencies? Word of Mouth, Advertising, or other?

I have a mainstay of old clients and friends back home in the UK, but I also get approached by companies in Japan. Due to the fact that my site is in English, I often get international companies in Japan approach me, looking for a web designer they can easily converse with. There aren’t that many freelance web designers in Tokyo I don’t think. For this reason, my site does pretty well in Google without me really having to push it at all. Also, my blog gets a few readers, so maybe that helps too. I never use agencies as the work has never really run dry. I have a working relationship with a creative agency in the UK called ‘Displayground’. These guys get great projects, and have a really quirky and original design style, so I love getting work from them. They are a relatively new company so their web presence is still in development. I’m the one actually building it, so I guess I’d better hurry up! The whole site is going to be built in Flash, and is fairly ambitious, so it should be a great addition to my portfolio if we get it right. If we’re talking about word-of-mouth, then yes, I think that’s happened a few times. A lot of my friends from University are setting up businesses, or working for companies that need web design work doing. I’m always happy to work with old friends, but I’m often too generous with my time.

7. What is your approach towards designing user interfaces for the web?

If I’m going to be hard on myself, then I would say that I prefer novelty to practicality. I like to try and do something in a different way if I can, just to try to build something that allows me to use my creativity a little bit. I should really get serious about my interaction design, but I’m not that kind of designer. I do like elegant interfaces, but I also like unusual and original ways to interact with sites. Most of my current freelance work to date has been fairly classic in terms of the approach to interaction design. I often find this is the way when you’re making corporate sites, especially in terms of the front-end site that the public sees. If you can get more cultural work, or work for companies with a creative slant on what they do, you can do something more interesting. Often, the most considered interface design I do is never seen by the public, in the administration systems and content management systems my clients use to manage the content of their website. In terms of designing the overall layout of a site, I often pull together lots of inspirational material: flyers, brochures, images from the web, previous work, etc., and then start playing with ideas in Illustrator or Photoshop. Once I have a color scheme and an idea for the overall layout and design, I use the brief together with my own ideas to mock up a page. Sometimes I make several, completely different designs. Some get finished, some get overworked – I’m not a good decision maker, but I do enjoy the process of designing and laying out more than the programming.