Welcome Nick. It’s a pleasure to chat. For those that don’t know you, could you say a few words about yourself.

Hi Andrew. It’s a pleasure for me too. Thank you for this opportunity. This is actually my first interview. My name is Nicolò Volpato, I’m 24 years old and live in Rimini, Italy with my beautiful girlfriend. I’m a designer and Flash developer and have now nearly 7 years experience in this field. In 2004 I decided to start my full-time freelance job and I founded my own design studio named GNV & Partners, where I cover pretty much every role from creative director to janitor.

My online portfolio can be seen at www.gnvpartners.com. In my spare time, I run my personal blog and playground at www.jek2k.com. The latest release of my blog received an unexpected reaction from the design community and earned me quite a lot of visibility as a designer.

In the last six months, I’ve been designing websites also for foreign clients, expanding my business outside of the local context. And then came PhotoMatt.

By viewing your portfolio and your company’s website, it’s easy to see that you are talented both graphically and with coding with standards in mind. Where did you start out? How did you come to master both aspects of frontend design?

I started designing websites in my spare time back in 1999. I released the first version of Jek2k.com in October 1999 and suddenly I knew that was going to become more than a hobby for me. I bought tons of books and read them during school lessons at the high school, while I used to spend my afternoons and my nights on my computer practicing with Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Flash. I had a goal clear in my mind: “I have to become able to build a complex website from A to Z. A nice design is not enough.”

In 2000 I knew no programming language and had no programming background, so I started learning ActionScript on my own, to improve my Flash projects. Soon I added JavaScript and ASP to the to-do list, because I couldn’t get enough from plain HTML.

In 2003 I introduced Web Standards as a core part of my work and started taking the first professional works. At the college, I chose the Multimedia Communication course, in order to have the opportunity to learn more about new media, design and visual communication. I graduated with honors in March 2005 with an essay on “Web design, usability and the use of Flash”, which contained a collection of the ideas and the thoughts that inspire my work. Writing that essay helped me to focus on the common steps of the design process, analyze them carefully and then elaborate best practices.

In the meanwhile, working as a freelancer, I tried to translate theory into practice and, moreover, to find my own unique style as a designer. This isn’t always easy, as one of the biggest difficulties being a designer is creating something beautiful despite the lack of time and in accordance to project’s requirements (read: limitations).

Over the last two years, I have done many different projects, from Flash development to full Flash websites, from graphic design to standard-based websites. I treat all projects, small or big, on the same level, always trying to do my best and trying to be original. I know every project is for me a great opportunity to build experience, to learn from success as well as from mistakes, and to refine and consolidate my design skills, both on the aesthetical and the technical side. I work both to meet my client’s expectations and my expectations. I just can’t deliver something that I’m not fully satisfied with. The first aim of my work is improving myself. My secret is my true and deep passion in what I do.

I have a motto – “Accessibility and Standards don’t mean boring.” You show this in your work. How would you convince a brilliant graphic designer that standards are the way to go?

I strongly believe Web Standards are not an option anymore. Anyone who is serious about web design should found his work on Web Standards. I think they are a basic requirement of any modern website. By Web Standards, I don’t mean only having your website to pass the W3C validation. I mean writing clean and semantic code, and forget about table-based design. This is probably harder to achieve for a graphic designer. Web Standards require designers to become a bit of coders, get out of the comfortable Dreamweaver visual environment and dive into ugly, raw code.

Speaking with my colleagues, I can tell this is the hardest step to take for many of them. Said that, Jacob Nielsen and other usability gurus had helped founding the wide-spread (wrong) opinion that a good and usable website is a site with few or no graphics, creating a stone wall between designers (and Flash designers) and Web Standards for years.

I never thought that Web Standards are really a limitation to creativity. We can make rich designs and stay valid, we can even use Flash and stay valid. OK, I know, maybe debugging CSS for Internet Explorer isn’t a designer’s favourite activity, but there is always a price to pay for innovation. And this will hopefully end as the evolution of the web will force browsers developers to fully support Web Standards.

In the end, I’d strongly suggest any designer to make the switch to Web Standards. The benefits you will get are for sure worth the effort.

You’re obviously keen to use some of the latest web trends. Which have been your favourite graphical trends over the years?

This is a good question. let me think…

I loved those 2003 vector-art Flash websites, like Tokidoki (http://www.tokidoki.it/) and Design Chapel (http://www.designchapel.com/). They definitely influenced my style a lot. Then the 2004 (was it 2004? I don’t remember exacly), with photo-realistic websites and real-life atmospheres. And I also love part of the so-called Web 2.0 style, the glossy, Aqua-style finishes, the gradient backgrounds and those clean, professional layouts. I love designs with a fresh, consistent and unique style. Often this means websites that go beyond the trends and break the rules.

And if you could eliminate one trend from the web (by means of a big red button perhaps), what would it be? Why?

Personally I really hated those full-screen, super-heavy, madly animated Flash sites with unreadable small texts and hidden navigation that were very trendy in the first years of this new Millennium. I have to admit there were some examples of nice graphic design, but those sites were so irritating and so unusable. On the other hand, I also think those sites helped people and designers to become aware of usability issues. The reaction lead us to a better design and to better Flash sites.

In the end, I’m not sure I would want to erase a design trend. I think every graphic trend leaves its heritage. And every trend, good or bad, influences the future of design.

PhotoMatt – A massive project and surely daunting for any designer. How did you go about redesigning such a high profile site?

You said it. Redesigning PhotoMatt is the kind of project that takes away a designer’s sleep for weeks. The expectations are so high. The visibility is huge. The first thing that crosses your mind is: “What if I fail?” Everything started after Matt (Matt Mullenweg, owner of PhotoMatt and creator of WordPress) saw my design for Clapton.nl. He loved it and my friend Bert-Jan (webmaster of Clapton.nl) recommended me to Matt.

When I received his email asking me to redesign PhotoMatt, I almost fainted. For the design, Matt told me he liked that retro style, with damasked patterns and serif titles. The ideas on which I founded my design was to make a site that reflects Matt’s personality and tastes. A personal, customized site and not another blog among the many. I “investigated” Matt, read his articles, his bio, viewed his pictures trying to figure out his personality. Then I based my design on a composition of realistic objects from his everyday life, in which his two present and past photos play the main role. Then I wrapped all up into my own style. And luckily it turned out to be the right choice. Matt liked the design a lot.

Among the many positive reactions, I’ve also been criticized for the large header of PhotoMatt. However, the header is the first thing we notice of website and the first thing that strikes our eyes. It has to be catching. I think a header like that tells you more about Matt at a glance than a hundred words.

Thank you for your time, Nick. Some great insights into the life of a truly great all-round designer.

Thank you again Andrew for this opportunity. Keep up your good work with Fadtastic,that is really a good and useful reading for designers. I hope to chat again in the future.

If you wish to ask Nick a question or debate some of the issues in this interview then please don’t hesitate to make a comment.

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