I have some more interesting visual art designs to share today. I visited the website of an Art Director for Web Design at an advertising agency. His name is Fabio Iaschi and his portfolio website is at www.mymoleskine.net. I interviewed Fabio.
Where are you located?
“I was born in Parma, a city of the northern Italy where I live and work. The nearby territory is famous for the food industry linked to the regional folk tradition. For example, Parma Ham and the Parmigiano Reggiano cheese are produced here. But my land is also renowned for it’s musicians, Giuseppe Verdi and Arturo Toscanini, for the paintings of the Parmigianino and for the master printer Giovanni Battista Bodoni. At the beginning of the 1800, Bodoni worked in Parma for the Royal Typography, where he invented some of the best known typefaces of the typographical history.”
What are your areas of specialization?
“I started as Web Designer in 1999, this has been my first employment after studies at the Art Institute. Now I work for an advertising agency in Parma as Web Art Director. I usually follow both artistic and technical aspects about the website project. My work starts with brainstorming, arriving at the ‘goes online’. I’m specialized in Flash animation, bitmap and vector design - but I’m also artist and illustrator.”
What are you most known for on the web?
“My best known project is probably My Moleskine - www.mymoleskine.net , a personal web site with a visual blog concept. This year My Moleskine has gained a nomination at the Webby Awards as best culture/personal blog. For this reason I’ve been mentioned at net@nite hosted by Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur. I’m also really proud about the article published into the 12th issue of New Web Pick, maybe the most famous digital magazine of the internet. My Moleskine will be also included inside the incoming annual Web Design Index edited by The Pepin Press. Other well known customers for which I have worked include some big Italian food companies.”
What tool-set do you choose to use in your work? What do you believe the benefits are?
“I always start drawing the idea on paper, then I put my thinking on pixel using Adobe Photoshop. With photoshop I design the entire layout and the GUI site’s. That’s my point of reference for bitmap graphics, Photoshop is simply the best. If you can master it, you’ll be able to do whatever you want. For coding the HTML page I use Dreamweaver and a lot of hand made corrections directly to the source. Dreamweaver has all that a web designer need, correction instruments, suggestions, and a good match between what you see using the interface editing and what you get in the code. CSS is great in order to customize every formatting aspect, I code it directly by hand. I hope that in future will be more and more uniformed and crossbrowser. For the animations I prefer to use Flash, I’m a user since the 4th version and I can only say that I love it! It’s possible to develop a wide range of rich graphic applications.”
How did you get into web design?
“It has been casually that I’ve begun with this work. When I’ve started, in 1999, I had never used a computer before. Once ended the last year at the Art Institute, I’ve been chosen for a selection at a web agency. This selection consisted of a test, design the home page of an oil company. I’ve done my design without the use of the computer after a research about the internet, because at the time I didn’t know what it was. After some days I discover that my old-school project had beaten all the contenders and they got me in their team.”
Do you remember the very first website you designed?
“The very first website that I’ve ever designed is the one about the oil company, but it was only an entry test. So the first site developed by me has been the corporate site of my first employment, CoNNeT web agency.”
Where do you get your art for these webpages?
“I create all the artworks of my projects starting from the customer idea because I’m never satisfied about what I can found around the internet. I don’t like that a project could be similar to another one, so I customize all the graphics aspects, from the font to the images.”
What is your general opinion on current trends in design and development, such as Web 2.0 and AJAX, etc.? Why do you think CSS design is becoming so popular among web designers?
“Conventions like web 2.0, that aim to give order by using rules, could be useful to increase the maturity of a newborn media like internet. But I’m a creative and I don’t like the rules. I decide by myself what is good for me and the users, sometimes breaking the 2.0 rules. AJAX is a smart technology that can really help users throughout navigation, without they can understand that something is happening, AJAX gives them a huge hand loading contents on demand. That’s what I mean for good technology. CSS, useful both for developers that the users, has good integration with AJAX. Web designers can change every aspect of a page simply modifying a few code lines and the users will be glad by the fast loading while browsing of the websites designed with CSS.”
What will be the next big development in webpage design?
“The next big jump of the net Will be the fusion of desktop and mobile contents. In future our desktop computers will be more and more portables and our mobile phones will be more and more like desktop computers. I think that at that point they will became a unique thing. The next contest for internet content developers will be the mobile internet.”
What do you think about Flash technology?
“I love it! Flash is maybe the simplest way to obtain complex and stunning web pages.”
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Flash?
“Flash is a friendly WYSIWYG software that anyone can use, but needs some tricks to improve the usability. For this reason newbies can do some little disasters by approaching it without basic knowledge. Another problem is the difficult indexing by the spiderbots. An entire web site produced using Flash technology could be invisible to the search engines forcing designers finding some countermeasures. Today’s internet connections are sufficiently fast to show contents developed with flash. An intelligent use of the Flash technology can provide some plus to your project. I use Flash for some animated menus, banners or entire microsites that require special appealing and special effects to attract visitors.”
If you could eliminate one trend from the Web, what would it be? Why?
“Could be to eliminate the misuse of pop-up windows, but the pop-up block softwares already do that. A pop-up windows can be useful, but only in a few cases. Seriously, there’s no things that I’d like to change about the internet trends. I think that one trend is intended to change, or run out by itself with the time. So, why worry about that?”
What language do you use for coding? Why?
“I’m not a pure coder, rather an artist. Anyway I like to keep me updated by using the latest versions of HTML, XHTML and PHP.”
Tell us about your use of colors in your designs.
“The color range palette of a site usually depends by the client’s brand identity guideline. In the case that I could be free to set the standard I prefer to use a few colors, maximum five. I love the plain colors, without gradients, because basically I’m a graphic.”
What are your sources of inspiration?
“I’m a tireless net surfer, inspiration comes from my navigation more than from anything else. I do a lot of research from which I take inspiration gathering from history, books, movies, dreams. Sometimes happens that I wake up in the middle of the night with an idea buzzing in my mind. In these moments I have to draw it on paper, then I can return to bed."
What are your favorite website designs that you did and did NOT design yourself?
“I’m hyper critic with my works, I have not a favorite between the ones that I’ve done. I love My Moleskine for the concept and for what it has became for me, a real mantra. While a good designed site maybe those ones: Bad Assembly - www.badassembly.com - and Neon Bible by Arcade Fire - www.beonlineb.com."
What was the toughest project or customer situation you’ve encountered?
“In our work those situations happens daily, the customer is fickle, almost anytime want to change some basic aspects of a project that force you to entirely rethink it.”
What are your interests and dislikes in webpage design?
“I’m interested in creativeness, amazing and doing things never done before with a well done stylish design. Nothing else.”
What were the mistakes you learned from most while in the web design industry?
“So many that I can’t remember them all. Mistakes are unavoidable and useful to learn.”
What is it you most like and dislike about being a web designer?
“The dislike is to be in front of the monitor for a lot of time. I’m also an amateur photographer because I need to take a deep breath sometimes, in this way I can do that. Instead a thing that I like about my work is that I’m able follow the entire production process. I like to participate to the birth and the becoming of a project.”
What blogs or magazine articles would you suggest reading?
“I would like to suggest only two sites to your readers. The first one is really famous and well known, I’m talking of Linkdup - www.linkdup.com - a cool directory site with only the very best of the net. The second I think that is a little bit less popular, but a huge pool of inspiration, it’s Everyone Forever - www.everyoneforever.com.”
What advice would you give to beginning web designers?
“I’m not so skilled to teach someone what to do, but I can tell you what I’m daily doing - or trying to doing: never stop researching and learn, be curious, creative and always think as an outsider.”
Thank you Fabio for the opinions and the experiences.
Arthur Browning
