Spicy Web Designer Interview with Claudio Cugia

Claudio Cugia is a web designer from Venezia, Italy. He’s been designing websites for almost the last 10 years (since 1999) and since then he’s worked as an employee and a freelancer at various points in his career. He is self-taught because when he started back in the day no schools taught web design so he learned as much as he could on his own but he still educates himself using RSS feeds and buying the occasional book.

1. When did you design your first website?

Back in 1999, almost ten years ago! It was my personal website where I showcased all the activities I was into such as music, guitar and foreign languages; I clearly remember this big flashy intro with a morphing effect done with Flash4 maybe, and a cool piece of slide guitar.

2. How long have you been designing websites for?

I’ve been designing websites for almost ten years now. I worked both as an employee and a freelancer.

3. Are you a self-taught or formally educated web designer?

I am definitely self-taught. When I started out there were no schools to teach our beautiful job so I tried and learn as much as possible ‘on the road’ – over the internet; I surf a lot to see the latest trends, I have countless RSS feeds and almost 2000+ bookmarks on delicious. I seldom buy IT books (I
care for the environment), actually the last one was ‘learning as3′ , a tough one.

4. What do you think is the most important skill that every web designer
needs to have?

One side is there is the ability to synthesize and understand the customer’s needs; on the other, the capacity to accomplish this task with the beauty of design. Technically I’d say the ability to know what kind of
technology fits best a website.

5. What is the most challenging problem you face as a web designer?

It has a lot to do with technical issues; in particular a lot of time is spent trying to make rendering the website correctly in IE6. It’s so frustrating. Lately I’ve been using a JavaScript library (ie7.js -
http://code.google.com/p/ie7-js/) than can almost do the dirty job for you.  All major browsers should comply with standards!

6. What is the most important technology that you use to design websites?

To me usability and standard compliance come first, so css and hand-coded html are a must. On a regular basis I use php and jquery a lot. Flash has still its own place but less now; I use it for banners or video streaming or when a client claims he can’t live without a flash based website. Optimizing websites for the iPhone is one of the New Year’s resolutions.

7. How do you usually price out the web design work that you do for
clients?

I always work on a time schedule, time is money of course – generally a good website design is the first step of a lasting customer relationship.