Dev-Dash with Dhavalyours :: Interview with a Creative

                        When people see a  interesting website, interesting post, they make it a point to write a positive reply on companies website. Company even wins lots of awards for its exclusive work on web. Although every project is a team effort, There are some people who deserve credit for amazing work. I would talk about creative today.

                       Lemme Introduce you to my personal favorite Ashwini Vyaas and Prashant Mudhalkar. As the religion goes,  building rep about your guest makes your audience enthusiastic about the interview. Being  part of various sucessfull online campaigns such as  Cadbury Meetha Bomb, Cadbury Meetha Message, SuperScrap , Royal Challengers and also Legrand Arteor he considers his commendable works on web. Prashant has worked on BigTv, Big Wall, Aparna Enterprise Royal Challengers  with a really good experience of 6 years in consumer web.

 So  lets know about insights of creative and let us see how do people like ashwini really transform dreams into web pages.

Dhavalyours:  Dude lets cut the hi/hello talk crap and jump directly to the point. Who according to you is a creative ???

  

Ashwini:  Person who is not restricted within water tight compartments  of thoughts and can think of making the impossible possible. Every single pixel can define marvels of web designing

Prashant : The designer who can understand users requirement and communicate with user visually.

Dhavalyours:  What does creative have to take in mind while making web pages ??

  

Ashwini: 1) User friendly 2) Interactive 3) Engaging 4) Content must be conveyed direct and simple. 5)Sustaining interest of the user.

Prashant : He should understand the medium very well. Technical limitations + possibilities of any medium. How he is going to deploy and how user is reaching to page. Think from users point of view  what kindda hardware, kindda bandwidth he is equipped with, his Age Group,his Educational Level,his  Community,his  Nationality These all things should be taken seriously.Lets take an example of Shaadi.com Here our target audience is Indians Who are getting married. So the age group is young 20-30 and context is marriage So here the color palette for designer should be vibrant color + Indian traditional colors. Color palette is very important,Color evokes emotion.

Dhavalyours:  and seriously no Joke How much do u take care while making a web page ? There must be tricky situations where you have to ignore certain facts and concentrate on imp. ones So which are those imp. details that you never miss in your web pages.

  

Ashwini: Actually i miss each and every guide line but i keep in mind to keep the content in 1024 by 768 pixels. 

Prashant :  Basics things don't take time, So  i will take care of basic hygine like Every page should be usable, Visually less beautiful is fine but the purpose of page should be satisfied, Position of element is more important than Beautification, Layout and grid should be in place first. Graphical content may come later, Position your elements text,image,video in Layout. and then work in Graphical entities, Google has a classic approach of minimalistic design keeping page clean and action-centric and it works :)

Dhavalyours:  How can creative be maximum productive ?  In the sense what do u need a proper brief ? a proper machine ? proper work environment  etc??

  

Ashwini: A written brief so that people cannot manipulate it after creative is been delivered. Good Machine like Mac, Tablet dual monitor in video editing and also inventories like images,contents reference images. This much is for me creative-heaven.

Prashant :  Compared to other medium web requires less hardware and best thing about web is you can produce on desktop. Hardware really doesn't matter. Window / Mac doesn't matter. Ideally i would require a good space where you can put your machine, sketch pad, big white board, Ipod , Good internet speed and lots of books on design reference. A small digital camera to collect digital references. Print is still far ahead from web Still Best designs are  on print than web. 

Dhavalyours:  Which has been the most challenging task and  how did you solve it ??

Prashant : Castrol Badge in Castrol Cricket is my innovation. There was a need of a visual symbol which presents performance of team and player and which was eventually becomes visual unit of Castrol Cricket  and requirement was it to be scalable, skin able which can have inter-site,intra-site application. It has become a brand-value for Castrol Cricket.

Dhavalyours:  Can you share with us your most favorite web design and explain why it is truly amazing ?

  

Ashwini: My One unpublished project but my personal favorite design wise 

Prashant : I personally feel i have not created my best site as yet. But bigtv  was my one creatively exclusive work

Dhavalyours:  What is worse ? getting your creative rejected or getting ample of changes in existing creative making it completely unusable?

  

Ashwini: Ample of changes in existing creative making the creative alien to me.At end of the making it is not my baby. 

Prashant :  Most of the designers make this mistake. They do not differentiate between art and design. Art is something that you create Its your expression you don't care about user Design is not like art. Design is something you are creating for someone else. So CHANGES will be there. Change is must in design. Now i m pissed off when i m briefed with 1 kind of  requirement and you have created 1 visual and if in the next meeting the brief is changed. Main purpose of design should be very clear. Signup page brief is User should be able to sign up. Somebody should not come and tell me user should not signup here he should click on the right hand side ads. The most complicated things have 1 line brief.Research should be long Brief should be short that is why we call it BRIEF right :) Try to learn the art of getting Approval Better Communication, Start with paper pencil 90 % problems get solved.

Dhavalyours:  With web evolving every single day how do you make sure you are in touch with latest web design techniques ??

  

Ashwini: Generally i have 2-3 reference websites which updates me about latest technology used on web like 1) http://thefwa.com/ 2) http://www.smashingmagazine.com/ 

Prashant : There are so many sites but A List Apart , Site Point , FFFound it is a image bookmarking website very useful.

Dhavalyours:  :: What is 1 design element that always work that you may call it as sure success ??

  

Ashwini: Classy Glossy Effect always works if  not placed under a grunge background. Like Apple

Prashant :  There is no design element which would work everywhere. Whatever is functional and loads fast works.

Dhavalyours:  Your design tips for new guys getting in this field ?

Prashant : Best way of learning web design is to see different web design. Every day try to understand 1 good website. Don't hesitate to go back in your design process. GO BACK correct your mistake and continue further.

Dhavalyours:   and people can contact you on...

  

Ashwini: ashwini.mvyas@gmail.com and on Facebook and on Orkut

Prashant : pmudhalkar@gmail.com and on Facebook  How  web designer is different from print designer or video cinematographer. The web is nothing but combination of all the media text,image video,audio and how to design interactivity in all kinds of medium. Web is interactivity You go and you touch / Click/ Drag  Art of Animation  should be learned. How it is done should always be  hidden. Design a new kind of experience . Designers job is to hide developers effort and highlight User Rerquirement.

Dhavalyours:  The thought process of 2 different creative guys working in same field,same company and also sometimes on same projects differed a lot. But one thing that both agreed on was Brief is the mother of all creative inventions. If Brief Changes creative becomes unusable. Art of Approval and mastering it helps us to grow in creative field. Personally i feel with existing tools and technical expertise flowing around Anything you can conceive and perceive you can achieve.

Ok next time we will definitely  come up with a new  guy on our favorite blog  Happy Dev-Dashing.

Always Yours,
 Dhavalyours