Interview With Ryan Downie, Web Designer

Ryan: Hi Brian, thanks for asking me to take part in this series. Well I have just recently taken the plunge to go freelance full time, as I was working as the lead designer at a agency it didn’t work out in the long term. I specialize in Design, Front-end development and ExpressionEngine. I don’t real have that much background on the Internet as I still think myself to be classed as a new to the design spectrum.

Ryan: The main reason why I chose ExpressionEngine over WordPress is what its capable of doing very quickly. I had a go at WordPress and didn’t like how it worked and not knowing PHP it seemed a bit limiting. ExpressionEngine was and still is gathering momentum so I checked it out. The learning curve wasn’t as easy as I would have liked but was worth it as it seemed more flexible for what I could see clients needing.

Ryan: Well my redesign has been in the works for as long as I have been a designer; I have not actually owned a site for that long. When I designed and released my first ever website back in may 2008 (you can still see a preview on unmatched style here) I wasn’t ready for how viral it went. All the pages where built in html and css and had a basic WordPress blog coded by a friend on there. It was a nightmare to update but it did help me get my first job so I cannot complain really.

I now feel ready I have a lot to say about the design community, new and exiting things to show off work wise and some new html surprises that I have discovered; and feel its time to get myself out there and bringing in some more work.

The focus of my design is to try and be different, I spent a lot of time looking in to art movements of the past to get inspired; as I am sick and tired of all the same shit that is coming out. People need to look away from what others are doing now and look at other mediums and movements and try to bring forward the medium now that we can basically use any font with Typekit et al.

What I have concentrated on was the grid behind the site, I have changed it to a 1080px one (as its my site and my TA for the blog etc is designers). I am also going for a yellow and black colour scheme, as I want the site to be as different as I can make it but still make it usable. I am trying to get this ready by the time this article should be out.

Ryan: Yes unfortunately lost my job as a carpet fitters mate (lived in a small village and this was the bigger employer); but it turned out to be one of the best things that happened to me. To be honest I didn’t even like art or seeing myself doing anything remotely creative until I hit my very late teens when I ended up going to college to study multimedia design. I only chose it as it sounded pretty easy and my two good mates where also taking it. I picked up Photoshop pretty quickly after that and by the end of the first year I dropped out as I found it really boring and was offered a job as a security guard and couldn’t turn down the money that they was offering.

When I was working at the job just before I got let go at the carpet place the evenings was pretty boring so I kept playing with photoshop now and again. When I was let go there wasn’t much in the way for work where I lived so I decided to have a go freelancing. I found it pretty hard to bring in work and money as I didn’t have a portfolio or any work that I could show (I wasn’t really ready) but someone gave me a job creating banners here and there for a few dollars. I didn’t really like that so I applied for a job at the local agency as was knocked back as I didn’t have any work. So I then decided to do my website and then went back and was offered the job. Never looked back since.

Ryan: Yeah I had someone who was looking for work and I was too busy to take the work on so I tweeted out and got some people pretty fast for him to go over. I did write about using social media in .Net Magazine. I use twitter a lot to get feedback on some designs I am working on from time to time as not everyone on my list is a designer and feedback is really important. From Twitter I have made some really good friends such as Adii, David Perel, Liam Mckay, John O’Nolan, Tony Chester, Gavin Elliot among others; who I talk to daily on IM and get some really good feedback if needed and opinions. Expect a log post to come to out of this and take my article further.

Ryan: I don’t really know what to say to this question as stated I feel that I am new to the design spectrum. I find it very flattering and strange at the same time that people send me fanboyish emails asking how they can improve and get known more.

I think the best bits of advice that I have learnt is:

1. Don’t care what “X designer is doing” as everyone and every project is unique. Don’t compare
yourself to people like Elliot Jay Stokes, Tim Van Dam, Andy Clarke, as they have been in this
game for years and put the years in to learn their trade.

2. Don’t look at designs and instantly think they are crap, you don’t know what process the designer
had to go through. They may be the best designer but client demands may have forced the
issue by not listening.

3. Market yourself as much as you can, they key is to build relationships with people and get in with
their mind. I have worked on some pretty good freelance projects without even having a portfolio or website.