Daily Resources for Web Designers & Developers by Andy Sowards » interviews

Chad Mueller Creative Interview – Web Designer, Freelancer & Blogger

Andy Sowards — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 18:10:47 +0000

Today we have the pleasure of interviewing an awesome, and well known Designer & Blogger. He is a great guy – I hope you enjoy the interview and learn a lot from someone who has been in the freelance design trenches for years!

Tell us about yourself!

I am a 26 year old creative professional, I have been a freelancer for 6+ years now. I am the owner and creator of Inspiredology – a design inspiration blog, as well as Projekt19 – which is my freelance company. Recently, I have partnered up with Nick La of N.Design Studio to help run BestWebGallery.com. I took on the role of Content Manager. As you can tell I am always looking to get involved in new creative projects.

I have been following your blog inspiredology.com and I have to say the content is impressive! What was your motivation to first of all, start inspiredology.com and how do you manage to keep the content quality so high?

Almost four years ago I was collecting inspirational images like business cards, screenshots, logos, cd covers etc… I was filing them on my hard drive, I had gained groups of folders and thousands of files. The only problem was that I wasn’t able to easily search, and organize them. I thought that if I started a blog – it would be a better way of getting organized. Before you knew it, I had bought the domain, designed the site and posted a bunch of articles. I had no idea that someone else would have found it as a good resource, after the first week I had received over 50,000 visitors. After that things just kept snowballing, the audience helped drive the content. Now Inspiredology is a three person team.

What is your typical day like?

Wake up early visit the gym, drag myself to my corporate 8 – 4 office job. I come home, that is when the fun starts – either I work on some Inspiredology posts, client work, collaboration projects or just waste my night playing around the internet.

What is your favorite thing to do in any given workday?

Work on my own creative projects, being able to create something without working for money, or having someone tell you what you should do.

Where does your motivation and Inspiration come from?

Being online, seeing the endless amounts of inspiration, and being able to interact with other creative professionals. We all challenge ourselves just by posting our work, we are basically saying – see this, can you do better?

What are some of the tools, programs, or amenities you use everyday that you can’t live without?

I have been using Project Bubble for my project management tool. Managing clients, contacts, estimates, invoices, project – it’s an all in one tool that I would recommend to any small business owner. Twitter is my twitter app of choice, my iPhone and Mac of course.

What other projects are you working on currently? What can we expect to see from you in the future?

Well we just launched V3 named “The Lab” for Inspiredology, at I am secretly working on V4 Re-Align, not a huge change but just adding small simple improvements. We are extremely pleased with the design, it’s not perfect but we believe we put together a great base, that we can work on making better.

Also, Projekt19 is working on a few big collaborations with some big named designers. We created Projekt19 not just for client based work, but also for the ability to work with other creative individuals.

BestWebGallery is a cool new project that I am super excited to be involved with. I have always been a huge fan of BWG, and Nick’s work so its a fantastic project to be involved in.

What advice would you give to someone starting out in the design industry?

Just jump in, be yourself and interact with others. Post your work, keep learning and you will get noticed.

Name 5 people on twitter that have impacted your career as a designer and are Must Follows:

Not sure about whether they have impacted me, but they are great designer, and must follows.

And of course @andysowards

Mac or PC?

Mac of course

Finally – If you guys have any positive feedback or questions, Please feel free to leave it below!

and always, if you enjoyed the article, let us know! And Share it! It helps us out! Thanks!

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Podcast Interview

Andy Sowards — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 18:42:53 +0000

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I had the honor of being interviewed on the 13th episode of the CrueCast podcast show.

If you want to listen to the informal, conversational podcast, just click the link above or listen to it on iTunes (view in iTunes).

My interview starts about 15 – 20 minutes into the podcast – skip around and you’ll find it, or listen to the whole thing – visit the interview post

as always I appreciate all of your support!!

If you want more interviews of me I updated my about page to hold most of the recent ones, also updated the portfolio (finally) on the site

Otherwise checkout more interviews of other talented developers/designers here – we will be posting a new one this week so stay tuned!

You like this? Don’t forget to follow us on twitter @andysowards and like us on facebook @andysowardsfan! We are also on that new fangled G+ doohikey.

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Ask Andy – new series coming soon – Ask me any questions you want!

Andy Sowards — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:33:32 +0000

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Hey Guys!

Just wanted to post an official blog post letting you know that I made a youtube video yesterday! Basically I want you to check it out and if you have any questions for me at all, leave it in the video’s comments (or these comments) and in the next video I will answer them! I am hoping to do a video series maybe 1 video a week or something like that, I am going to do some other video stuff on youtube but this is the first one so let me know what you think! The questions can be serious or funny, I want to help the design/development/blogger community as well as make these videos fun, because without a laugh here and there I don’t really enjoy boring videos

Hope everyone is well!

You like this? Don’t forget to follow us on twitter @andysowards and like us on facebook @andysowardsfan!

Google Plus is Shiny and New! Do you have it?
I Do. I loves it.
Follow me on G+ at https://plus.google.com/107906093846039182490/posts

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Book Review & Interview w/ Author of 10 Steps to Powerful Online Self-Promotion for Creatives

Andy Sowards — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:20:26 +0000

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Unless you have been browsing the internet under a rock over the past month or two, then you have probably heard of the book “10 Steps to Powerful Online Self-Promotion for Creatives” as it has definitely swept over the internet like wildfire.

Well this week I had a unique opportunity to interview the author of the book, as well as review it!

So without further ado, lets dive into the review – and then I will talk with Alex Mathers so you get to know him a little better!

Review: 10 Steps to Powerful Online Self-Promotion for Creatives

My first impression of the book was a bit mixed. I had never heard of Alex before seeing this book pop up everywhere – so I was a bit skeptical. Since there are a lot of people out there that think they have the ‘secret formula’ but really they just want to grab a quick buck off you.

Well going through this book (its a pretty big book btw) I noticed a lot of these things I already knew – but I had to learn it on my own, the hard way, through trial and error and just plain ole perseverance.

Self promotion is hard work.

It is definitely no easy feat to get your name out there, and while there is no secret formula for success, this book has a lot of great tips that the people just starting out really should know. The tips found in this book will help you save a lot of time and frustration if you are truly serious about yourself and your business.

If you are determined to make your mark on the world, then the tips in this book will probably help you get there a little quicker than if you tried to figure it out all by yourself. But if you are looking for a book that is going to do it all for you, then you’ll never find that.

Conclusion

I enjoyed reading the book, it had a lot of things in it that I thought would be perfect for someone starting out. It may not be the best thing for someone who has been doing this for 10+ years, but it would still be a good refresher.

So I say go ahead and buy it if you are looking for this kind of thing – It definitely won’t hurt you.

Now onto the interview with the man behind this great self-promotion hand book!

Interview with Alex Mathers

1. Tell us about yourself!

I am an illustrator and designer living in London, UK right now. I’m a fan of war films, obscure electronic music, writing, Japanese things and contemporary design. I currently run two sites.

One is Red Lemon Club, a site for creative professionals aimed at sharing various methods and discussions on online self promotion. Ape on the Moon, my other site, is a blog showcasing the best in contemporary illustration styles and techniques, featuring a host of excellent illustrators. I also contribute to Design Taxi and am about to join the contributing team at productivity for creatives site: the 99%.

2. I must say your book has gotten a lot of attention lately, for good reason! What was your motivation behind it?

The book was a result of the site that I set up: Red Lemon Club, which was set up to focus my own efforts as an illustrator of researching the best online methods and theories behind effective and up to date self promotion, aimed specifically at creatives. The site was built to share what I found with the creative community, and I get a nice sense of satisfaction doing it. I hadn’t seen anything like that when I was going about promoting my own work, so Red Lemon Club and the book was the result of me scratching my own itch.

The book was written with the intention of dramatically improving the self promotional effectiveness of all kinds of creative professionals.

3. What is your typical workday like?

I’m definitely a night worker, so will tend to take some time getting into a working momentum during the course of a day after I’ve rolled out of bed. I’ll get up pretty late, but then go to bed very late.

I’m more productive when there are fewer distractions around where I live, and that is best in the evening and night.

4. How did you get started on Illustration and Self Promotion?

Apart from learning a little art at school, I’m not formally trained in illustration. I studied geography at university, although I decided to return to my interest in art and design a while after completing the course and working in the property industry. You might see some geographical influences coming into the work I do. I taught myself how to use Adobe Illustrator whenever I had a spare moment in my free time, and went full time as a freelancer about a year ago.

Learning about self promotion and sharing it on Red Lemon Club has been an inevitable result of trying to market my own designs and illustrations, and I must say, I’ve learnt a lot!

5. Any tips for new Illustrators trying to get their name out?

My main tip would be to focus on standing out in your industry. Look for ways to make what you do jump out from the rest. Once you achieve this, then your promotional efforts will become much easier.

Also make sure you have some kind of time you set aside each day/week for marketing your work, and write these days down in a calendar that is visible on your wall. It’s easy to let marketing activities slide when you are not reminded of them on your wall.

6. What was your favorite recent project and why?

I had a fun time putting together a poster for Inspired Magazine that was part of a free giveaway for the site. I illustrated a spooky scene of a monster emerging out of a tar pit, in a similar style to those 1950s film posters, with a bit of a modern twist.

7. What other projects do you have going on?

I’m looking into growing my two sites further, expanding my illustration portfolio, promoting my book, working on music-making on the side and eventually possibly starting a book on promotion for specifically musicians.

8. Do you use a PC or a Mac?

Mac all the way

Hope you guys enjoyed the review and interview!

Leave some comments and let us know what you think, or if you have questions!

Thanks for reading everyone!

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Creative Corner Featured Artist: Canvas Painter – Giles Dawe

Andy Sowards — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 07:31:40 +0000

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Featured Artist: Canvas Painter – Giles Dawe

Today’s Featured Artist is a great real life craftsman from China that creates beautiful Canvas Print art.

One reason I chose Giles is because as web and graphic designers, we often take our tools for granted, and should take a step back to appreciate the things that real artists create with their hands, sweat, and canvas.

I hope this interview is inspirational and motivates you to maybe go outside and paint/create something tangible so that you can refresh your mind to create more Digital awesomeness!! It might even inspire you to create some Canvas Prints of your own!

Lets start!

Tell us about yourself

In brief, my background was that I was born in England, took up a Fine Art degree and decided to pursue Web Design after my studies, working for National Newspapers and Central Government websites. I later moved to France, Hong Kong and recently China, where I now paint full time. As an artist, I’ve won an Erasmus European Scholarship and had work purchased by Hong Kong Director Wang Jia Wei.

Tell us about your work

I’ve always been creative and for me web designing was the next step, although I missed the feel and “craftsmanship” which only actual painting and drawing can offer. My work is quite detailed, as I normally use 0/2 to No 1 brushes. For example, the Invisible Woman piece is 150x100cm in size and took about 2 months to finish.

As some work can take so long to complete, I always try to make sure I know what I’m painting and trying to represent. Whether it’s a hidden object or particular meaning or perhaps even the use of a certain colour to draw attention. For my University essay, I actually wrote 5000+ words solely on the colour blue!

Where do you get your inspiration?

My inspiration comes from many places, particularly Modern and Surrealist painters although I find it too easy to duplicate their work whether subconsciously or otherwise and always try to create new, interesting and original pieces.

Tell us about your surroundings

I live in China which is famous for it’s “knockoffs” and lack of copyrights and this applies to artwork too. Nearby where I live, there are factories of artists painting the same duplicate images of famous paintings, day in day out and they make a good living from it. I think the China art scene is still growing, but is developing well in major cities like Beijing and Shanghai. If you’re interested in Chinese artists, I’d like to recommend the following up-and-coming painters: Simon Birch, Chen Yong Liang, Liu Hong Yuan and Zhou Jin Hua.

Where can we see more work?

Examples of my work can be seen at GilesDawe.com, many have particular meanings but I leave it up to you the viewer to discover my work. Feel free to contact me on my GilesDawe.com website, just to say hi or even enquire about a tailored commission piece. Enjoy!