I am just now transitioning from one position to another. I have just accepted a Designer position at Blue Flavor, the well-respected design firm in Seattle. For the past year and a half, I've been a Senior Web Designer at The World Company, a Kansas-based news media company with upwards of 30 different properties in newspaper, TV, magazines, online, and more. Prior to that, I worked in the education sector, at Kansas State University and Washburn University, in an effort to bring standards-based web design into that arena.

How does your usual process of designing flow?

It really does depend on the project, and especially it's timeframe. Given enough time, I will go through several preliminary steps, including Information Architecture and grey box-style wireframing before I get to doing visual design or coding. If I have a bit less time, I'll start right out in Photoshop, cranking out mockups of a few key pages of the site or web application before getting to HTML and CSS. If I'm really strapped for time, I've been known to jump straight to HTML and CSS, skipping the other steps all together.

Many great web designers today don't have a formal design education. How about you? Where did you learn?

I do not have a formal design education, no. I've learned about the web primarily by reading. Books, magazines, blogs, mailing lists - anything I can find, really. With respect to design, I feel like I have some natural talent for it, but I've also spent a lot of time self-teaching there, as well. I've got tons of design books, and I've learned to open my eyes and be more observant than the typical person. Design is everywhere and that means inspiration is everywhere, too. When I was graduating high school, there was barely such thing as the web, and no such thing as formal web design education. That is changing, though, as more and more schools add programs. I would encourage people to look into what programs are available and consider formal education if they can find a great program, but not to fret if they can't. In this industry, your portfolio will always be more important than your resume.

Do you consider yourself a web celebrity?

I don't really think about it.

At a recent conference in London, UK, you were talking about Future of the Web. Would you mind telling us the key points of how you view this future?

The future of web design is pretty hard to predict, but my feeling is that it will become less and less device-dependent and more and more technology-agnostic. I see more mobile devices on the horizon, but also more large-scale devices, like large touchscreen kiosks and interactive installations. I'd predict more and more use of Adobe's Flash, especially if the W3C continues to move as slow as they have been in recent years.

Could you share a couple of web design tricks with us?

Hmmm...I don't know that I have any great new 'tricks' that your reader haven't heard before. But, rest assured, if I come up with any, they'll be publicly available. I'm not interested in keeping tricks to myself. :)

What inspires you the most?

People. Especially my family, my daughter, my girlfriend, and my friends. But also brilliant minds like Steve Jobs and Malcolm Gladwell. And, of course, my fellow web designers, who I am constantly stealing ideas from. :)

Who is your favorite web designer? What does he/she can that you cannot?

It's really hard to pick just one. If I'm forced to, I'll choose Khoi Vinh, the Design Director at The New York Times. Much of his work is stylistically similar to mine (we both lean towards a strong focus on grid-based layout and typography), but when I see it, I always feel like he manages to do things a bit more elegantly, and he always makes it look so easy. It's hard to explain, really.

Speaking about Django. In your comment to an article 'Django or Ruby on Rails' you mentioned that 'the single biggest difference' is the programming languages - who knows which. What if a programmer knows both programming languages well enough ? what would be the reasons to choose one or the other?

Both are great frameworks, and it'd be hard to go wrong with either one. As a rule of thumb, Django is probably a better choice for publishing-type situations. Django came out of a newspaper company (The World Company, for whom I worked), and it has several little niceties that make it well-suided for building custom CMSes and so forth. Rails, on the other hand, came out of Basecamp, 37signals's popular web application for project management. As such, it is well-suited to more application-style sites. In reality, though, you can build applications just fine with Django, and you can build publishing platforms just fine with Rails. So, take your pick - you'll be fine either way.

I prefer Django for two main reasons: speed and library support. Python is much, much faster than Ruby, and Python has a huge selection of third-party libraries. Ruby's is growing, but isn't near as large. Python is also a much more widely used language in general, so it's probably easier to find programmers that known Python than it is to find ones who know Ruby.

What do you think Django still lacks in order to bit Ruby on Rails and become the dominant web application framework? In order to become the dominant web application framework?

Nothing. Django is the more dominant web application framework, from what I can tell. Although no one has an exact count of how many Django sites are out there and how many Rails sites are out there, it certainly seems like there are more high-profile Django sites. With 30+ major daily newspapers running Django, including some of the highest-traffic news companies in the world (for example, WashingtonPost.com), I think it's clear that more traffic goes through Django every day than Rails. There are some Rails-based niche sites, such as Twitter and Basecamp, that have become quite popular within the web design community, but these pale in comparison to sites like The Post when you look at traffic numbers.

That having been said, there are some things that I'd like to see added to Django (all of which Rails is lacking, as well). In particular, I'd like to see a generic search application (django.contrib.search, in Django parlance) and an overhaul of the admin tool's user interface. The admin tool (which Rails does not have) was quite impressive when it was released, but it hasn't changed much in the past two years, and it's be nice to see it given some design love.

I've got an impression that there's a tendency to using less and less Flash in web design. Is there? Why would/wouldn't you recommend using Flash to your clients?

I disagree. I think there's less and less sites being built exclusively in Flash, but more and more responsible uses of the technology, combined with web standards. Flash is just a tool, like any other. It's a means to an end. In all cases, there's a best tool for the job. Sometimes, Flash is the best tool. When it's the best tool, I would recommend it. When it's not, I wouldn't. It's really as simple as that.

When a client comes to you, what are the frequently asked questions from your side in order to understand what suites person's interests better?

I try to focus on the business goals of the client. I prefer not to talk much about the actual design of a site. Instead, I want to fully understand what the client wants to accomplish, what message they want to convey, and what problems they are looking to solve. Many clients want to talk about colors, layout, fonts, and the like - but I try to avoid that as much as possible.

Are there any web design galleries you're frequently visiting?

Nah, I don't really view web design galleries at all.

You are moving to Seattle to work for Blue Flavor. How did such a decision come? What will you be doing?

I've known the Blue Flavor guys for quite a while now. I was in Seattle for an interview with a large media company, and I let them know I was going to be in town so we could hang out. After I'd done the other interview and felt like that company wasn't a great fit for me, Blue Flavor approached me about the possibility of me working with them. From there, it just snowballed very quickly. I'll be doing mostly design for Blue Flavor, but also some development, as well as community outreach (blogging, writing articles for online and print publications, speaking at conferences, speaking at local events in Seattle, etc.).

Among the websites you designed, which one is your favorite?