Spicy Web Designer Interview with Peter Wimrén

Peter Wimrén is a web designer who is originally from Sweden who made the move to London in the UK and has his sights set on coming to America to pursue his web design career in a place where he can be at “the forefront of web production and online design” as he puts it. He graduated with a degree in Art Direction for the web and decided to move to London to continue to pursue his career and things have being booming ever since for Peter.

1. How did you first get started? How long ago was that?

I knew from quite an early age that I wanted to design and it never changed. In Junior High I had my first experience when we had work experience for a week. I did not want to go to one of my parent’s workplace so I made a deal with a classmates dad and came to his print shop. We did mainly screen printing and signage.

Throughout high school my books where full of drawings and the only subject I really aced was art class. When going off to College I studied Graphic Design and media and as with high school I only really excelled in the subjects I liked, color studies, typography etc. We also had 3 months work experience so I worked at an ad agency making smaller pieces of work.

After graduating I started work at another place doing the same. This was around the time the Internet really started to kick off in Sweden and more and more clients wanted web work done. As no one at the agency I worked did stuff like that I decided to go back to school and learn it.

2 years later I graduated with a degree in Art direction for the web. I then did some freelance stuff but never really got a steady job to learn more. So I decided to go to London, I got a job working for free as an apprentice for 6 months doing freelance stuff on the side. After the 6 months they gave me a job and when I decided to go to America 4 years later, the company I worked for and one other partner company offered me to come on board as a director. So a few months ago I signed a contract to stay with the 2 companies for another 3 years in exchange for 15% shares in each company. The freelance work has taken a bit of a step back but I still do my fair share of jobs on the side. For obvious reasons I try to spend more time building the 2 businesses I now have a stake in. We will for instance be releasing some free Wordpress themes and other goodies soon.

All in all I have been working with design since 2000 but I knew what I wanted to do from a very young age.

2. Do you work with other freelance web designers or do you prefer doing all the work on your projects yourself?

As I only do design and front end development I usually have to work with other freelancers on projects. It usually works out quite well; as you hire someone for their time or specific talents they let you sit in the driver’s seat and head up the project. I deal with the client and manage the project and the freelancers. Likewise, when I’m approached by freelance developers for my services I leave project management to them.

3. I noticed the FOWA badge on your site? How are you involved with them? I know that Elliot Jay Stocks another web designer I’ve interviewed has had some involvement with them.

I’ve never had the pleasure of working with the guys over at Carsonified, but as they were giving out free tickets to the FOWA London 2008 if you advertised the event on your website; I gave it a shot. Unfortunately I did not receive a ticket, some other lucky guy got to hang out with the “cool kids”. Who knows, maybe I’ll run into one of them at the Ecommerce Expo in a few weeks time.

4. Where do you get your ideas for the websites that you design?

Everywhere! As I work with print as well, you try and mix the 2 formats and the inspiration works both ways as well. I read quite a few design magazines and books. You are exposed to so much advertisement on a daily basis in London that it is impossible not to be influenced.

Of course you also spend hours and hours looking at other people’s great web design. Not to copy but to look at colour combinations, layouts, clever ways to display information and solve problems. The main CSS galleries are a great source of inspiration but I also try and look at other countries and their way of approaching design. There is a great deal of good design coming out of Asia, unfortunately many of them are made in flash so it is tedious surfing at times.

I think you can get inspired by most things actually, but in the end you need to try and find a design that fits your client’s needs and brand guidelines.

5. What are your favorite tools (software, pen and paper, other?) to design a website?

I use a pen and paper to gather my thoughts before starting to design. I usually do my wire framing on paper and all logo work starts on napkins, bar coasters or paper. Photoshop is the tool I use more than anything on my computer. I always keep about 2 or 3 versions below the newest software to avoid bugs and quirks (and keep costs down). So at the moment I work with Photoshop and Illustrator CS, Dreamweaver MX for my CSS and FTP. I use flash 5 to trace all my drawings, after which I work with them in Illustrator. I have not yet wrapped my head around using the pen tool, it takes to long compared to flash. I guess I could train myself to get faster but it’s like the saying goes; “If it’s not broken, don’t try to fix it…” And some other good freebies are firebug and IE tab (add-ons for firefox), PIXresizer for clients with loads of large images.

6. How do you usually price your web design work for clients?

I usually try and get as much information as possible about the project and what the client is trying to achieve. I then try and estimate how much of my time that would involve. I generally get one or two developers quote how much time they would charge me for their involvement, I use different developers for different jobs. And at the end of it you guess, it is always a guessing job. Some you get right, some you get wrong and you end up spending much more time than you estimated.

It is a lot easier when the client is working towards a budget, then you can tell them how much of what they want they can get for their money.