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CSS Burst: What are some of your latest designs that you are most proud of?

MM: Fbook.us, Tweetgift.com Olddeerfieldproductions.org, Pixelspread.com, Tumbl.us

fbook.us

tweetgift

Old Deerfield Prod.

pixelspread

tumbl.us

CSS Burst: How did you get into web design?

MM: It just seemed like the logical extension of creating graphics on the computer. When I was in my early teens, it seemed like the perfect way to share the art I was creating on a computer with the world. That just lead to learning more and more about design for the web.

CSS Burst: How do you prepare yourself mentally for a new design?

MM: I try to find some kind of inspiration. Not necessarily inspiration from other web design or design in generally. It's often times a lot more interesting to find inspiration from other types of media.

CSS Burst: Does your mood affect the design you put out?

MM: Possibly, if it's a design for myself, but if it's a design I'm doing for someone else, I'd like to think my mood has much less to do with it than what they actually need, and what the design needs to be. It's my experience and inspirations that affect my design far more than my mood.

CSS Burst: What is one of the most important pieces of information you get from a client? Colors?  Logo tie in? Audience?

MM: Obviously the companies brand is important if you need to work within those bounds, but I find it more interesting to find out kind of sites my clients gravitate to. It's a good way to gauge what you need to appeal to.

CSS Burst: Do you have any advice for designers just getting into web design?

MM: Every time you see a new technique on the web, find out how it's done. Go look at sites by your favorite designs and find out how everything comes together. And just keep designing more and more

CSS Burst: What are some of your latest designs that you are most proud of?

MR: Visit http://ifohdesigns.com/our-work/web (there you can find my latest work, or at least the latest that I have uploaded).

CSS Burst: How did you get into web design?

MR: A band that I was in needed a website to list shows and offer a discussion forum. My friend who was all ready familiar with HTML offered to help us out and design the site, but he became too busy with work. I started to read up on HTML from http://lissaexplains.com/, this was around 2002 so as you could guess it was mostly table based, image ready slice fest garbage heh. I took great interest in hand coding without a wysiwyg aid, so I became acquainted with HTML and some simple JavaScript. I decided to go to school, and graduated from New England Institute of Technology in 2007 with a degree in Information Science with a focus on Multimedia & Web Design.

CSS Burst: How do you prepare yourself mentally for a new design?

MR: Inspiration, CSS gallery sites, such as your own, and trying to notice aspects of web design in real every day life.

CSS Burst: Does your mood affect the design you put out?

MR: Absolutely, working a 9-5 job can put a stress on creativity and that is never a good thing.

CSS Burst: What is one of the most important pieces of information you get from a client? Colors? Logo tie in? Audience?

MR: Content. A client can speak all they want about what they want, or what they like, but until you see their content for yourself, it is all a bunch of nod-and-say-yes.

CSS Burst: Do you have any advice for designers just getting into web design?

MR: Be honest and true to yourself. Always think "would I actually use this?" and "how can I make this better?"  Making things complicated is much easier than making things simple, and simple key. Users are dumb, so try to be a user more often and your designs will work!

Thanks Matt for taking the time to answer our questions for our CSS Designer Spotlight series.  Stop back by for more CSS Designer Spotlights in the future.

Vector Magic (vectormagic.stanford.edu/vectorize) is a research project by James Diebel and Jacob Norda, of the Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. It is an 100% browser-based tool that allows users to upload a JPG image to be converted to a clean, scalable vector format. For those unaware, photographs and most bitmap graphics are comprised of a multitude of tiny dots called pixels – each one a different color to form the image. With bitmap (or raster) graphics you have a fixed amount of image data to define that image, so enlarging that image doesn't provide more detail, it only makes the "dots" larger. Something like sitting really close to a television screen. Vector graphics are mathematically defined shapes that are often smaller in file size and offer the ability to scale to any size, large or small while retaining perfect image quality. Vector Magic has a simple user-interface that takes users though a simple question-based set of steps to help smooth the conversion.

After uploading your image (I choose a graphic of the Element Fusion logo I had handy), the system begins to ask questions about the quality, amount of compression artifacts, and type of image provided.

Next the system shows the colors found in the image and lets the user determine how many to use in the final graphic. Here I've choose the set of original colors from the graphic. The lighter swatches in the larger sets typically consist of colors use to optically smooth the edges of the shapes in the original raster image.

This screen shows the original image next to the newly created vector image. Several sophisticated tools are presented here that allow you to manually tweak either the original or converted image before re-vectoring. My vector came out nearly perfect the first time so no editing was even needed.

Finally, I chose to download the image in an EPS format and opened it with Adobe Illustrator. The final result is amazing.

Vector Magic really is a magical tool. It is amazing that a simple browser-based application manages to out-perform similar tools included in expensive graphics applications like Adobe Flash and Adobe Illustrator.

Read: 100 Resources to Attract, Retain and Utilize Rock Star Programmers

Read: Web 2.0 Tutorial Roundup

Here are a few of his latest designs:

Nolita House

Blirt

Moving Parts Theater

CSS Burst: How did you get into web design?

RL: I actually got into web design when I wanted to do a site for my friends snowboarding trips, I just started learning step by step and truly loved it right away.

CSS Burst: How do you prepare yourself mentally for a new design?

RL: I don’t think I mentally prepare myself for a new design, I only sit down and think a lot about what will be best for the client. Sometimes I do just some brainstorming with my other developers or designers friends.

CSS Burst: Does your mood affect the design you put out?

RL: The mood is definitely a factor in my work, if I am in the right mood the outcome will be better just like any other thing in life, when you are in a good state of mind you’ll do better in life J

CSS Burst: What is one of the most important pieces of information you get from a client? Colors? Logo tie in? Audience?

RL: Well that’s a tough one, I would have to say that the most important information I generally get from the client is their opinion, colors theme or any other digial inputs are always a plus but their feedback and inputs are the most important to me.

CSS Burst: Do you have any advice for designers just getting into web design?

RL: Yeah , actually I do “ Always look to improve, even if you are already done with the work”. Just try to read a lot and learn more each day, the outcome will be much better at the end.

We would like to thank CSS designer Roey Liad for taking the time for our interview.  Stop back by for more CSS Designer Spotlights in the future.

CSS Burst: How did you get into web design?

JZ: I started making websites in college. We had a design course called "Design Technology" that allowed us to explore some new media technologies. At that time there were no WYSIWYG editors like Dreamweaver so you really had to learn your HTML. I was really interested in the medium so I poured all of my efforts into learning about the web. This continued over the next few years as I looked for every opportunity to explore the web -- I even got my painting instructor to allow me to use Flash for a project.

CSS Burst: How do you prepare yourself mentally for a new design?

JZ: The pure creative conceptualization is always the toughest part. You always want to do something that really fits the client and project, but also something unique. The initial stages of the design
process for me is really about research -- immersing myself in the client. I look over meeting notes, the client's current website, and the websites of other organizations in their industry. I'm looking to
see what others are doing well and how we can do things better than the competition. I also try to draw inspiration from other artists and designers. Overall, I'm just making myself open to ideas and ready to be creative.

CSS Burst: Does your mood affect the design you put out?

JZ: I don't know if there is a direct effect. But I will say the creativity is a fickle thing and some days it feels like that great idea will never come. There are techniques you learn along the way
that can help jump-start the creative process, but there are times where it just isn't going to happen. When that happens many times I'll put the work away and come back to it later.

CSS Burst: What is one of the most important pieces of information you get from a client? Colors? Logo tie in? Audience?

JZ: My goal in a project planning meeting is always just to get the client talking. Colors, logo, branding, and audience are all important. But what I really want to hear is the client talking about
their website. What they don't like about their current website. What they wished the new one would do. I want to hear the pain - that's where the best ideas come from.

CSS Burst: Do you have any advice for designers just getting into web design?

JZ: I have two pieces of advice for new web designers:

1. Learn HTML. Don't rely on WYSIWYG editors or other software. Really learn HTML and CSS. Know how it works. Be able to build a site from the ground up. This makes for better, leaner websites and really makes a difference when it comes to fixes and updates.
2. Live on the web. Browse all over the place and keep up with what is going on in technology, technique and design. You've got to know where you are in order to move forward. Sign up for all the betas and try everything out. When you really think as a resident of the web you'll make better designs that draw on the things you've learned from others. There are tons of brilliant people making the web. Follow their lead and then pave your own path.

We would like to thank CSS designer Jason Zimdars for taking the time for our interview.  Stop back by for more CSS Designer Spotlights in the future.