Spicy Web Designer Interview with Namie Taniguchi

Namie Taniguchi is a web designer working in New York City, New York in the United States originally from Japan. She started designing websites back in 2005 but before that she studied fine arts and considers herself an artist. She is skilled in HTML, CSS and using Photoshop, Illustration and Dreamweaver she designs for a wide array of web design projects.

1. How did you get started in web design?

I was an art student and I wanted to be an artist. But When I graduated from college, I realized that there were no jobs for me to make a living as an artist. So I decided to be a web designer and started to make my site and my friend sites and here I am.

2. When did you start designing websites?

I graduated college in 2005, so I started it from 2005. Before then I was not a computer person at all.

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

Right now I am working for a company as a full-time web designer. I have many different projects holding my hands, not only web related projects, but also prints and help desk tasks. I can’t spend all my time devoting to web design. I have a limited time, so it’s my decision to have more time to design web and sacrifice others, or find the easiest way to get things done for web and have more time to do others. I usually sacrifice others because what I want to is web design. Time management is the most difficult things to handle right now. I don’t have time to develop my design skills at work so I use my time.

Also the biggest challenge, or I will call it, the biggest fear is that there would be many opinions about what I create for sites, not always good one. I have to accept their opinions and often they are right and I am wrong and I re-do it and gets better.  Nobody wants to hear that “I don’t like it” or this is not good”.

4. Why do you refer to yourself as a Front-end developer over calling yourself a web designer?  Is it a way to brand yourself to your clients?

I never refer to myself as a Front-end developer, though. I think I am a web designer, although I want to be a Front-end designer.

5. Where did you go to school and has it helped you become a better web designer/front-end developer?

I went to art school in NY. My major was fine arts; I was doing drawing, painting, sculpture, and so on. It absolutely didn’t help me to become a web designer. But it might help to become a GOOD web designer.

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?

I started in 2005 and I was learning HTML and layout with table.  But I think it was a transition from table to CSS layout and I started to hear the word “Web 2.0″ “Web standard” “CSS gallery” and so on.  I think it was a quite change within 3-4 years.

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

I started to use Dreamweaver, since then I use Dreamweaver, illustrator, and Photoshop. The basic triple adobe applications are enough to do the job.