Spicy Web Designer Interview with Lee Munroe

Lee Munroe is a web designer from Belfast in Northern Ireland. He has been designing websites for the past 11 years. He studied Multimedia Design at University and later went on to do his masters in Multidisciplinary Design to further his skills. Lee does a lot of his own front-end coding and has been featured in Wired Magazine for his “Big Word Project” which he worked on with Paddy Donnelly.

1. How did you get started in web design?

One day I missed the bus to school (about 11 years ago) so I did a sneaky, stayed at home and designed my first website on Geocities lol it was a WWF wrestling site and it had lots of animated gifs and .midi background music *face cringes*

2. When did you start designing websites?

I started designing websites for a small web design business, roughly 9 years ago. Back then I had Photoshop 4 I think and framesets were all the rage

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

Managing work load is quite hard. Until a few weeks ago I was always part-time freelancing while studying at University so juggling Uni work and freelance work was awkward at times. Now I’ve finished my masters so should be able to get a better work flow into place now.

Also, working from home as a freelancer it is hard to separate work life from personal life. I’m always on the laptop, night and day, 7 days a week. I really need to get some rules into place.

I can’t think of many challenges design wise. Constant inspiration for new projects might be something that flags up every so often but I try to overcome that by getting daily inspiration from reading blog posts, reading books, ads, magazines, CSS galleries etc.

4. Do you code on any of your web design projects? And if so, do you consider yourself a “Front-End Coder”? Why or Why Not?

Yeah, I’ve done a lot of back and front end coding in the past although lately I am concentrating on front-end stuff (XHTML, CSS, Javascript etc.). It allows be to be more creative and with useful tools like Wordpress, there isn’t as much need for me to do backend programming.

5. Where did you go to school and has it helped you become a better web designer?

I went to a school called Banbridge Academy, about 25 miles outside Belfast. But there was nothing to do with web design there. I studied Interactive Multimedia Design at Uni (graduated 2007) and some of the course was focused on web design. Did it help me become a better designer? Yes and no. Not so much the first 2 years but final year helped me a lot; we had good lecturers on board then who knew more design wise. I went on to study MA Multidisciplinary Design and that helped a lot to develop my skills further.

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?

Definitely, all for the better. A lot more user focused now. A website doesn’t have to be all singing all dancing with flash and animations now, like a lot of sites were years ago. There are a lot more simple focused designs now and a lot more useful applications.

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

Hmm… I don’t just want to say the cliché Photoshop… but it’s hard not to. Pen and paper (and post-its) for ideas, sitemaps, info architecture. Illustrator for wireframes and then Photoshop to design. Coda is a nice app for writing the html.

8. How have being interviewed by Wired Magazine, BBC Radio and other news sources been?  How did they contact you for an interview?  What have the experiences been like?

Great experience and something to put on the C.V.

My friend Paddy Donnelly and I were lucky to have a unique idea for a University project that the media took an interest in (The Big Word Project) and it helped to get our names out there. It was good fun at the time although people quickly forget so you need to make sure you keep moving forward with new ideas and projects.