PSDFan Extra

1. Thankyou for doing this interview. Could you please tell our readers a little about yourself and your design background?

Thanks Tom, it’s a pleasure! I’m Chris Spooner, a graphic and website designer from Sheffield, UK. I’m also the guy behind tutorial, freebie and design article related site; Blog.SpoonGraphics.

In terms of my background, I’ve always seemed to enjoy being creative, and found Art was my best subject throughout education. I followed this right up to university where I graduated in Art & Design. Since then I’ve worked as a designer at two local studios before heading out as a freelance designer earlier this year.

2. Tell us a little about your blog SpoonGraphics. What inspired you to start it, and how did you get it to the point that it’s at today?

Blog.SpoonGraphics is my little corner of the web, it started as an experimental add-on to my portfolio. At the time it seemed every designer was setting up a blog, so I decided to give it a go myself! I started out posting the odd tutorial and free giveaway, soon some of the posts gained decent exposure and traffic and the site has grown from there! I’m now proud to see over 10k subscribers and increased exposure for myself as a designer.

3. What first got you into design and what do you think makes design so special?

I love how design can manipulate the sub-conscious thoughts of people, just like in traditional art that forms different emotions, design is used in the real world often to generate sales and promote products. I’ve seen many examples where design has resulted in the success of a product or service while competitors without a polished brand or any professional design material haven’t had as much success. Obviously more factors are involved in whether something takes off, but I think design is one of the important aspects of success.

4. Your portfolio is home to some pretty amazing work. Where do you get your ideas from?

Thanks! I do enjoy experimenting in many different areas of design, browsing the web often generates some inspiration from checking out the work of other designers. I also find it useful to read through tutorials, even if the outcome is something I could already create myself, I regularly discover new methods and techniques which can then be applied in new areas.

5. What is your favorite aspect of designing? For instance, do you prefer web design, logo design or photo manipulation?

I like to work on a wide variety of projects including logo design, print design, illustration, character design and web design to mix up my day. The underlying elements of design are the same throughout, but the application is usually different, for example putting together a design for print is a little different to coding up a website, but techniques from both areas can be mixed up and used for different purposes. Right now I’m quite intrigued at learning the basics of 3D modelling tool Blender to see if I can reproduce some characters in three dimensions or maybe use some 3D elements in my illustrations, this kind of project I’ll look into in my spare time but I’m sure the new techniques will come in handy for mainstream projects.

6. What do you predict will be the next big design trend and why?

I’m really looking forward to wider support for CSS3 in the world of web. Such features of multiple background images, border images and @font-face styling are going to open up some wicked opportunities for unique website designs, making it much easier to create that out of the ordinary style without the extra markup often associated with crazy designs! I think the rough and ready style with hand drawn elements and snippets of paper is going strong and gaining wider popularity, a contrast to the shiny effects of the whole web 2.0 malarky!

7. What are your favorite design websites to visit?

I enjoy visiting a wide range of sites through my feed reader, ones I tend to find exceptional content through are sites such as Design Float and Designm.ag that compile links to hundreds of articles across the design community. Other favourites in my collection are CSS-Tricks, Vandelay Design Blog and GoMediazine, all of which have interesting tutorials, roundups and sources of inspiration.

8. Thanks very much for this interview. Do you have any closing words of advice for aspiring designers out there?

Thankyou for the opportunity! I’d advise new designers to keep up your work, experiment with different techniques and applications as well as jumping off the computer and creating some hand-made resources for use in your digital designs. Anything to mix it up and add diversity to your work!

About the Author:

Tom is the founder of PSDFAN. He loves writing tutorials, learning more about design and interacting with the community. On a more interesting note he can also play guitar hero drunk with his teeth.

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