Well, here's a funny thing, 2 pretend companies trying to pass off my own portfolio as their own! MMS Design & Sherline John are claiming they designed my portfolio. It also turns out that everything else in their portfolio is not their work either. Feel free to spread the word, this really is rather appalling.

I was very pleased to get the chance of an interview at Web Designers Interviews.

Rich, please tell us a bit about your background. How did you get into web design? How long have you been in it? Did you get any design education?
I got into design around 1998, later than I would have liked and therefore missed the opportunity of an education or at least a degree, though it certainly hasn't held me back. After college, I started an Amiga software distribution company which was working out really well but for those of you who can remember the Commodore Amiga, it just wasn't happening after the mid 90's. During this time I was hand coding websites and designing CDRom covers so it was something I was interested in, but didn't think of it as a career path. It was only when Commodore sold out to Gateway that my business ceased and I realised I had a strong interest in design.

What projects were the most important in your career?
During my time as a junior designer I was given the opportunity to design a site, flash game and e-cards for an FMCG brand called Enjoy Organics. It was such a responsibility and a lot of pressure to deliver something at the level required, I didn't even believe in myself at that time, I just had great guidance from the team and my senior.

You've worked for a number of studios. Was it a useful experience? What made you want to work for yourself?
Vital! This is a must for all designers or developers, no matter which studio you work for you will learn and you will learn a lot. I once worked for a studio which was possibly the worst place I have ever worked, getting out of there was like being resuscitated from drowning, but I still took positives from it. Even if all you learn is how to treat customers and fellow peers, you've learnt something vital.

You've partnered up with another designer Susannah Whiteand yet you don't have a common website. How is this partnership helping you?
Susannah is my partner in life and business, so we work together on a lot of projects. Having the luxury of working alongside another designer whilst working for yourself is extremely beneficial for bouncing ideas off each other, you're constantly learning whilst working alongside a respected peer. We're still a young collaboration which is why we don't have a common website yet, we just haven't got round to working on it. There will be a ‘Brown & White' website eventually so watch this space.

Please explain the color scheme of your portfolio. Was it dictated by your last names?
Of course! We toyed with the idea of being less literal, but it's such a gift identity it would have been a real shame not to use it. Sometimes an idea is just so simple and perfect why try to be clever about it.

Your skills include graphic and interface design, front-end development, illustration. What kinds of projects do you prefer - those centering around one of these skills or those that span all of them? Why?
I'm actually moving away from front-end development, design is my passion so that's the area I wish to concentrate on. I'm now in my 12 year as a professional, over the years It's been a necessity to have an adequate level of multiple skills to get by but I've found the higher the level you work at, the more you need to concentrate and put all your focus into one thing, otherwise you're in danger of being labelled a ‘jack of all trades'.

How would you describe the style of your designs?
I try not to let personal style overtake a design and always approach each project differently, however if I had to define my own style I would say simple yet striking and timeless. I love timeless design classics, give me an Anglepoise Lamp, a Miles Van Der Rohe Barcelona Chair or a Charles Eames Coffee Table any day. I love to keep things simple yet striking, I absolutely adore good typography, favouring classic typefaces such as Helvetica, Din, Bodoni, Avante Garde, Clarendon etc. I try to avoid trends, web trends are a bit like shopping at Top Man or Ikea or listening to chart music, they have no depth, durability, originality or style... style is important!

Is it hard to find clients these days?
Direct clients yes, but mainly due to limited budgets and not for the lack of enquiries. We mostly work with other studios, this way we don't have to rely on finding our own clients and working with other studios allows us to maintain a certain level of quality because we tend not be as restricted by budgets.

How much time do you spend working each day? What does a typical day look like?
A typical work day could be around 10-12 hours, 6-7 days a week. I tend to start the day browsing my google reader feeds and answering any enquiries for around an hour with a cup of tea but once I start a project it's hard work right though the day until late evening breaking for lunch, walking the dog and dinner.

I had this notion that working for myself would consist of working around 3-4 day weeks allowing plenty of time to myself, but I don't think I've ever worked so hard in my life. I try to keep up with my blog and twitter updates when I get a chance but finding time to work on my own projects is almost impossible.

Is it easy to generate ideas? Where do you find inspiration?
I find the ideas stage is often the hardest, but it's the most rewarding of the stages. I like to allow plenty of time for putting together moodboards and wireframes. The moodboards consist of things I like the feel of for the project at hand, it could come from anything from product packaging, typography, colour schemes, magazine layouts, photography, posters, shop fronts... anything really.

When you were a beginning designer, who did you admire and try to follow?
I don't think I tried to follow anyone, digital design was still very early when I started. When I got into design professionally, as a junior I certainly took a lot of inspiration from David Carson, I loved his unorthodox approach, breaking pretty much every design rule but his work was phenomenal. I remember trying to emulate his print design on screen and failing miserably. Like myself he didn't study design at university so he was a real inspiration to me. I used to read magazines such as Creative Review for creative ideas, old Habitat catalogues and Wallpaper magazine for layout ideas. 10 years ago, (as I remember) Coolhomepages was the biggest and most popular online gallery at the time, if not the only digital online gallery. I remember looking at these amazing designs on Coolhomepages and thinking one day I would love to have a site featured on here.

What would you recommend to beginning designers now?
Get as much experience working in studios as possible, don't even think about working for yourself without a good 6-10 years of experience behind you. You can only really learn and improve by working with people better than you. I've been designing professionally for around 12 years now, I don't particularly think of myself as a good designer, I just know I can do a good job. I still have so much to learn, I want to be better and that will happen with time and effort.

 

Brown & Whitehave just launched a new website for the UK based rock band The Pineapple Thief.The band are anticipating the imminent release of their new album 'Someone Here is Missing', and to help promote it has a big bold shiny new website. The interesting thing about the build of this site is the whole thing was built on the wordpress platform which we will be exploring more on future projects. The artwork on the site was designed by the legendary Storm Thorgerson who is famous for his sleeve design for bands such as Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin.

Check out the new site.

We went to see Marina & The Diamonds last night at the Norwich Arts Centre, didn't know too much about them prior to going, after a terrific performance I'm very much looking forward to the debut album. You can view a couple of photos from the gig here.

We've finally launched a new portolio site for illustrator Andy Ward. Andy wanted a new site, designed to feel more professional and branded. The design needed to be sympathetic to his illustration style, or at least complimentary with an overall feeling of fresh, friendly and clean. Visit the site here.

My flyer design has been featured as a double page spread in the Japanese publication 'The image of business cards today.'

We went to see Breakestra last night at the Norwich Arts Centre... the bad points about the gig is Mixmaster Wolf wasn't there on the night, I had to stop dancing an hour and half into it (yep it was that long) because I was dying to use the toilet, and my right ear drum feels very damaged today... the good point was it's easily the best gig I have ever been to... period! This has now raised the standards of gigs so high I'm concerned I will be disappointed with anything else, if you get the chance to see them, don't hesitate, get a ticket!

You can check out a few photos I shot on the night here,unfortunately I couldn't get any other angles ;)

We have a Brown and White holding page! A special mention for Susannah, who spent ages kerning various typefaces for a very long time, well done sweetie. Full site coming soon (depending on how busy we are)...

I just got in from walking the dog and Miss White said she had some very good news. The Skylinehas been featured on Site Inspire...whoop! My favourite site has just featured one of my finest pieces of work which is an impressive achievement for me as I see everything featured on here is the cream of crop of digital design.

This week I've been featured in Web Designermagazine as a CSS All Star!

www.rdbrown.me.uk is the personal showcase for Norwich based freelance web designer Richard Brown. The site was designed in December 08 and launched in January 2009. At the time of the design process I was adamant on staying well away from the sketchy/homemade look which was a very common design trend of the moment. As much as I liked it, I just couldn’t bring myself to design something that had already been done 1000 times before and something I would be bored with after only a few days or weeks from launch. I wanted something clean and minimalist that would allow the work in my portfolio to speak for itself, something that wouldn’t confuse visitors and displays what I do from an instant glance.

The css and scripts used are extremely simple yet effective. There’s a nice jQuery script called Sliding Boxes for the latest portfolio pieces. I’ve also used twitter and flickr badges to pull in my latest social networking feeds.

Sliding Boxes
For my portfolio site, I used a really simple yet effective Sliding Box jQuery script by designer Sam Dunn to display my latest work at a glance. All of the sliding box animations work on the same basic idea. There is a div tag (.boxgrid in my css) that essentially acts as a window where two other items of your choosing “peek” through. I decided upon using just one sliding effect to keep the selections consistent, but there are actually six different transitions you can select from, you can take a look at the options here http://buildinternet.com/live/boxes/.

Using the script itself is extremely painless. Simply insert the script in the header of your page, here you can specify the size and duration of the transition. Customize the css to fit the style of your website, then simply insert a line of code specifying the div class, alter the image path, description of the project if necessary and amend the link path to the correct destination.