Michaelbox

I mean really know her?

I really can’t say how much you know her, how could I? The best I can really do besides rec­om­mend­ing that you go get to know her your­self at grace­smith (Twit­ter), would be to read the fol­low­ing ques­tions posed to her recently, so lets get to it.

Obvi­ously, you are a twit­ter­holic who absolutely refuses to attend the weekly meet­ings. Who are some tweeple, besides myself, who you think every­one should check out?

Grace Smith: Of course you! A few oth­ers I would rec­om­mend would be:

• emtay­lor (Twit­ter) — Emma is an awe­some designer who I’ve been col­lab­o­rat­ing with for a few years now.(web­site)
• AtiKuS­De­sign (Twit­ter) — Michael is a web designer here in the UK I’ve had many a con­ver­sa­tion with.(web­site)
• mete­o­r­a­cle (Twit­ter) West­ley has lit­er­ally made me LOL on sev­eral occa­sions with some of his tweets. One of the coolest, fun­ni­est peo­ple to fol­low.(web­site)
• andysowards (Twit­ter) My long time devel­oper bud who has to be one of the nicest/knowledgeable guys in the indus­try.(web­site)

I could hon­estly go on and on rec­om­mend­ing peo­ple, there are so many peo­ple who rock on twit­ter. I’ve prob­a­bly for­got­ten some of my favorites here (eek)!

You are stranded on an island and can only bring along three musi­cal albums, what would be the color of your tree on the island?

Grace: Red — so hope­fully a pass­ing ship might spot it and come res­cue me!

Like most free­lance design­ers, you put client projects first and fore­most. If you had more free time, what type of projects would you like to do or skillsets you would like to learn?

Grace: I would love to work more mobile design, I’ve just started my first mobile app for a client which is excit­ing, but I would ide­ally like to get a chance to be involved in more projects like this.

I also have a real itch to get into design­ing apps for the iPad and would love to get a lit­tle team together to cre­ate an app that would be as addic­tive as it was useful.

Which of the fol­low­ing would you choose to be your ally in an upcom­ing Apoc­olypse? Pirate, Ninja, Zom­bie, Politician?

Grace: It’s got to be a ninja, because they’re quick, smart and deadly.

What are some ways that you reju­ve­nate your cre­ative juices, espe­cially in a field that requires cre­ativ­ity con­stantly just to keep up?

Grace: Just leav­ing the office and free­ing myself cre­atively works extremely well to refresh my cre­ativ­ity, even for just a short period of time. I usu­ally like to get my beloved Canon 350D out and spend 10 or 15 min­utes tak­ing and set­ting up shots, as I find Pho­tog­ra­phy is hugely inspiring.

After the break I usu­ally go straight for my Mole­sk­ine and jot down some ideas and have a short brain­storm­ing ses­sion which is enough to give me that spark of inspi­ra­tion to start work.

When birds stand on power lines and don’t get hurt, it’s most likely because of:

• good tim­ing, they only land between calls
• body mate­ri­als that are insu­lated from current
• not touch­ing any­thing else at the same time
• they do get hurt, they just express it poorly

Grace: they do get hurt, they just express it poorly

What is your all-time favorite project, if you had to choose just one?

Grace: Tough ques­tion Michael! I think it would have to be the Web War­rior Tools e-book store design I worked on with Leo Babauta and Glen Stans­berry around 2 years ago. It was my first time work­ing with some extremely high pro­file clients online and it was both an awe­some oppor­tu­nity and an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence, because both Leo and Glen were just superb to work with.

That project has led onto scores of other projects and clients, as Leo and Glen have referred me to other peo­ple like Muham­mad Saleem and Jay White, to name just a few.

I actu­ally talk about this expe­ri­ence more in my blog post: How one ques­tion trans­formed my business

Have you ever been guilty of using Comic Sans in a seri­ous way, before learn­ing the error of your ways and know­ing bet­ter? Do you have any other sim­i­lar design crimes?

Grace: Thank­fully I can hon­estly say Comic Sans has never been seen in my Pho­to­shop or CSS files!

Being a cre­ative type, could you tell us some of your favorite styles of art?

Grace: I stud­ied His­tory of Art at A-Level so I’ve devel­oped a deep pas­sion for Art through­out the years. I have quite a diverse taste when it comes to Art, two of my favorite styles being Abstract and Neo­clas­si­cal. Two of my favorite artists from these styles are Gra­ham Knut­tel, an Irish abstract artist and Jacques-Louis David, a French Neo­clas­si­cal artist.

I’m espe­cially drawn to art with a story, for instance David’s paint­ing — The Death of Marat (con­sid­ered his mas­ter­piece), beau­ti­fully tells the story of his friend Marat, who was assassinated.

I’ve vis­ited both the Tate Gallery and The National Museum of Art in Lon­don and aim to return in the near future.

What color, if you could, would you make “the new black?”

Grace: Blue, as it’s my favorite color.

Do you have any orig­i­nal per­sonal quotes that you’re will­ing to share?

Grace: When I felt down or annoyed about a sit­u­a­tion, my Father (who passed away sud­denly 5 years ago), would always say to me — “if its to be, it’s up to me”. I’m not sure if that’s some­thing he made up or a quote he had heard, but it’s always stuck with me. The idea behind is, that while I can’t always con­trol what hap­pens in my life, I can decide how I react and that I have to make things hap­pen for myself.

Roses are #FF0000, grass is #00FF00, design is an art, do you know what I mean?

Grace: I sure do. Art and design sur­rounds us every­day, as design­ers we should be more keenly aware of this than most!

What are some of your favorite stereo­types to laugh at, regard­ing design­ers and the design community?

Grace: That we are all ego­tis­ti­cal, beanie wear­ing, cof­fee addicts who hate our clients and spend most of our time decid­ing if #ccc­ccc beats #bbbbbb.

You have a par­tially filled bev­er­age glass. Is the glass half full, half empty, big­ger than the glass needs to be, or “who stole half of my $*&%^ing drink?!?!” ?

Grace: It’s half empty and I’m already on my way back up to the bar!

What are your thoughts on Cre­ative Com­mons licens­ing when it comes to the design com­mu­nity? Surely there’s plenty of resources and knowl­edge that is bet­ter off shared and encour­aged to be shared.

Grace: I per­son­ally feel Cre­ative Com­mons Licens­ing is a fan­tas­tic way to take your own intel­lec­tual prop­erty (per­haps images, writ­ing, videos etc) and share it with the com­mu­nity. It encour­ages col­lab­o­ra­tion, re-use and shar­ing while still pro­tect­ing the orig­i­nal copyright.

For instance I use the Cre­ative Com­mons License (with Attri­bu­tion) on Flickr to find images to use within my blog, it means you have the oppor­tu­nity to use some amaz­ing resources, which with­out this, you wouldn’t have access to. Of course the orig­i­nal authors spe­cific requests in terms of their work should be respected at all times.

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I want to thank Grace for tak­ing part in this inter­view, I know that I had fun com­ing up with these ques­tions and I hope she had fun answer­ing them. I am also hop­ing that other design­ers will be inter­ested in par­tak­ing in an inter­view with me in the future, allow­ing every­one to get to know them just a lit­tle bit more.

Please com­ment below with any thoughts or con­cerns. Also, if you have any ques­tions that you’d like to see asked in pos­si­ble future inter­views, feel free to sug­gest them as well. All humor­ous and seri­ous questions.…seriously considered.