What got you interested in Flash?

For years I scraped a living as a photographer when a friend of mine, who runs the website www.urban75.com, suggested that I get a portfolio online to save myself some legwork. This was in 1998 and as I?d never touched a computer before literally - I took a part-time course in web design. Flash was still quite young then but I saw it as the technology to run with and luckily we got on well. By the end of the course I was offered a job and I've been flashing ever since. I still enjoy playing with Flash when I can find the time.

What was the first website you designed?

My own. It?s been evolving ever since. The first site I designed for a client was for a small web-shop called Warp-interactive. It had all the Flash bells-and-whistles!

What/who inspires you?

Nature, natural movement, and I watch a lot of movies. I'm a photography junkie as well. I do surf, checking out my peers, but I try to avoid absorbing the latest trends and styles (I say ?try? as it?s hard to avoid some of them creeping in occasionally).

How does your design process flow?

For myself, using Flash almost exclusively, I find the movement, interaction and visual design tightly intertwined and so I design as I build and experiment. This approach confuses clients/agencies sometimes, they?re used to seeing flat designs worked out before the build begins, but it works for me. I believe the ?PSD to Flash? approach doesn?t do the program justice; I like the unexpected results that Flash sometimes pulls out of nowhere and I often follow tangential paths to see where they?ll end up.

You are a freelance web designer. Have you ever worked in a team? If yes, why did you quit?

Yes I worked in a few teams, most recently AKQA in London. I quit because my partner and I had a child. She?s a kiwi and it took us all of five minutes to choose between bringing up a child in South London or New Zealand!

What advantages and disadvantages of being a freelance web designer can you name?

Advantages:

- no longer have to work stupid hours to meet deadlines set, seemingly at random, by account managers who have no idea of the design/development cycle - a better work-life balance;

- stroll into the studio in the morning;

- get to watch your child grow up;

- actually get to talk to clients, rather than hear it second hand via some manager or other;

- horrible client? Cut your loses and move on? Freedom to choose your projects (when times are good that is);

- no office politics.

Disadvantages:

- can feel isolated at times. No one to bounce ideas off, talk shop or high-five when things, finally, work out;

- unreliable income;

- not so many high-profile jobs - big companies like to play with other big companies;

- no one around with complimentary skills or knowledge (the web helps there though);

- doing your own accounts;

- no office politics!

Are there any web designers whose work you are constantly following?

Group94, Wefail, Hi-Res and I always like to see what Yugo Nakamura and Joshua Davis, two early influences, are up to.

What web design galleries you?re frequently visiting?

The FWA and Newstoday.

Could you give classical examples of a high-quality websites designed in Flash? Why?

Oh, too many. One recent one that I was jealous of was http://www.sharpideas.com/. I think it's clever, intuitive and, to use a buzz-word, immersive. I had fun and learnt about the company and it?s output almost as an aside.

What does a Flash web designer need to do in order to make a Flash website as friendly to search engines as HTML/CSS website?

I get good ranking by paying close attention to meta-tags, file-naming, alt-tags and alternative copy in the HTML. However the best method is to make a site that people like to visit so as to get those all-important inbound links.

There's a tendency to web accessible sites. One of the major problems with Flash is that it presents difficulties for many people with disabilities. What do you see as a solution?

I'm pretty busy these days and I only really get to learn new techniques and approaches when a client requests them. So far no one has requested any real accessibility options so I?m sorry to say I don't have an answer to this one.

What can you name as your biggest achievement in web design?

www.fbfx.co.uk is still my favorite site and got lots of coverage. www.a-to-s.co.uk , for which I did the Flash Dev, pulled in many industry awards but this little gee-gaw - http://www.andyfoulds.co.uk/amusement/bushv2.htm - has been around for years, has had millions of hits and has been very good to me.

Are there any design tricks you use in your work?

Not really.

What do you think the next big development in the Web would be?

I'm not about to second guess the internet - who knows where it's headed? And if I did know for sure I'd keep it to myself and become a billionaire! However the attempts by the big US telcos to scupper Net Neutrality and own the gateways is something that worries me. The one thing I don?t want to see is the internet as cable TV.

If you weren't a web designer, what would like to do?

I'd like to be a professional surfer, snowboarder or cyclist, but I won't because I?m crap at all those things and not very fit. I'd still like to be a photographer, or learn a craft, make non-virtual things for a change.

Thanks, Andy, for a great interview.

Helen Walker

Helen Walker graduated with a degree in Mass Communications and Sociology. She worked as a newspaper journalist for two years after that. Having always been interested in cyberculture and its impact on society, Helen switched to online journalism and joined Design Interviews blog in July, 2007. Ever since she's been interviewing web designers and administrating the blog. Helen is a keen movie-goer and she is also a panda lover.


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